Zaire (The Congo) - Under African Skies
Continuing my random selection of a box of slides from storage, next up is Zaire (now known as DRC, The Democratic Republic of The Congo), around 1988. Under African Skies was a BBC2 series about the music of Africa. The programme actually exists on YouTube, a very blurred scratchy version of it, dubbed from a Danish TV showing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBaUo7TtZxo . There was also a BBC album: That's one of my photos, top L. 'Kinshasa is Africa's undisputed musical heart,' says the The Culture Trip . Rumba , which developed into soukous, is impossible not to dance to. I remember a man in front of a stage whose movements were so fluid it looked like he was made of elastic. Artists in our film included Papa Wemba , Ray Lema, Franco, and Zaiko Langa Langa. We shot a memorable sequence with the stylish Sapeurs of Kinshasa , later picked up by The Face magazine. Watching the film again (don't, it's just too blurry) reminded me that documentaries