Le Grand Kallé : his life and music : Joseph Kabasele and the creation of modern Congolese music

"Much reverenced as the founding father of modern Congolese pop music, Joseph Kabasele with his handsome compendium finally gets the serious release he merits. There are two CDs of songs - many taken from shellac and vinyl, not available for decades - with 104 pages of authoritative and entertaining text from compiler Ken Braun to tell the story of Congolese pop music and Le Grand Kallé's great contribution to it ... [The Cuban son], reimported into Africa (...) was the music that fired Kabasele, who was both a trained musician and a lover of local music. He put it all together with his band African Jazz. They called it rumba, though it was not that close to Cuban rumba. Other bands tried to follow, but Kallé was the classiest. He was the first".