Shauri Yako

Nguashi N’Timbo never achieved the pan-African or international success of other Congolese contemporaries, but his impact on Congolese music is invaluable. He made a name for himself in the 1960s first playing with the “Godfather of Kenyan Rumba” Baba Gaston in Lubumbashi, and later with Orchestre Sentima alongside Sam Mangwana. At one point he even sang in Franco’s legendary TPOK Jazz. By the late 1970s he’d moved to Nairobi, like so many Congolese musicians at the time, where he released his biggest hit “Shauri Yako,” which has since become an iconic classic of Congolese popular music and has been treated by countless excellent renditions by the likes of Orchestra Super Mazembe, the wonderful Mbilia Bell, and even Kenyan artist Jim Chuchu. His wandering melodies and complex percussive patterns, typical of his Shaba region, now the Haut-Katanga province of Congo, bled into Congolese popular music through his own hits and the music he published on his label, Ntimbo.