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Le Grand Kallé
From HitStory, the pop encyclopedia of School of Rock · Artist
Joseph Athanase Tshamala Kabasele, better known as Le Grand Kallé, was a Congolese singer, composer, record boss and founder of African Jazz. He was born in 1930 in Pala Bala, near Matadi, into a Luba family, and moved a week later to Léopoldville, present-day Kinshasa. He received more education than many of his contemporaries and worked for a time as a typist. After working with a group of session musicians, he founded African Jazz in 1953, the first fully modern Congolese band to record in the studio.
Music and breakthrough
He brought traditional Congolese instruments, such as the Tetela tam-tam, the ngongi and the lokole, together with a worldly rumba with layered guitar playing and melodic vocal phrases. Guitarists such as Tino Baroza, Dechaud Mwamba and Nico Kasanda laid the foundations of the Congolese rumba guitar, which for years rang out across East, Central and West Africa. In 1960 Kabasele and African Jazz played the song Indépendance Cha Cha at the Belgian-Congolese Round Table Conference in Brussels, which became a symbol of decolonisation and unity. That same year he became the first Congolese musician to start a label of his own, Surboum African Jazz.
Influence
After internal ruptures in the band he founded African Team in Paris in 1969, and in 1970 the album L'African-Team appeared. In his later years he somewhat faded into the background, but remained respected, and in 1980 the musicians' union named him grand maître of Zairean music. He died in Paris in 1983. Kabasele is regarded as the father of modern Congolese popular music.
Listening
Discography
Studio albums
- 1970L’African‐Team
Mentioned in other articles
- Congolese rumba and soukous Genre
In 1960 Le Grand Kallé wrote Indépendance Cha Cha, the song of independence, and Franco led OK Jazz for decades.