Congolese rumba hopes to join world heritage Cuban cousin

Published on : 08/18/2021 – 4:14 PM

After the Cuban version, the Congolese version? An official campaign was launched in Kinshasa to promote the inscription of Congolese rumba as intangible cultural heritage of humanity, local media reported on Wednesday (August 18th). This musical style resulting from the Cuban rumba of the 1930s having a great posterity in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Congo-Kinshasa), and in the Republic of the Congo (Congo-Brazzaville),

The file, filed last year with Unesco, is defended on both sides of the Congo River by the two countries which take their name from it.

“The glorious history of rumba”

The launch took place during a ceremony chaired by the Congolese Minister of Culture, Catherine Kathungu Furaha. The latter called for a media mobilization and on social networks, in embassies, ministries, universities and schools to make known each week “the glorious history of the rumba part of a rite of the navel dance to become an identity led by Afro-descendants and all of us, each in his time “.

To see: Sam Mangwana, living legend of Congolese rumba

According to André Yoka Lye Mudaba, the director general of the National Institute of the Arts and president of the joint committee for the promotion of Congolese rumba, quoted by the daily Le Potentiel, there remains “the phase of promotion and lobbying (… ) in order to actively support this nomination by the end of 2021 “, the date on which the decision will be made whether or not to classify the mythical musical style as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

The Cuban version of rumba has already been accepted by Unesco in 2016.

With AFP