Gérant

By the late 1980s and early 1990s Paris was home to a vibrant African and Caribbean music scene, and a specific “Parisian” style emerged from the blend of zouk from the West Indies and increasingly fast-paced Congolese soukous that converged in the French capital. The song “Roger Milla,” a tribute to the legendary Cameroonian football player, is a classic example of this with its fast rhythms, zinging guitars, repetitive choruses, and infectious grooves that circle around and around in an intoxicating dance. The song opens the 1991 album Gérant by Congolese giant Pépé Kallé, who like so many others started his career with Le Grand Kallé’s African Jazz. However it was his work with influential soukous band Empire Bakuba, and his solo music later, which propelled him to stardom. Gérant suffers from some late ‘80s synthetic production at times, but overall is a great overview of Kallè’s different styles, from the faster rhythms of “Roger Milla” to the jazzier, more rumba-adjacent sound of “Amba” and “Muana Ndeke.”