Frontlines of Power: Sonic Politics in the Democratic Republic of Congo

Soundtrack to a Coup D’État (2024) begins with a drum roll turning the cinema hall into a concert where rhythm, culture, and politics converge. Seconds later, a black-and-white archival image shows American drummer Max Roach pounding drums, toms, and cymbals in a frenzied yet harmonious rhythm. The audience witnesses how the American government deployed superstars like Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, and Dizzy Gillespie as instruments of cultural diplomacy, sending them to countries such as Ghana, Senegal, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of Congo to counter Soviet influence during the Cold War. Through the U.S. State Department’s “Jazz Ambassadors” program, initiated in the mid-1950s, Louis Armstrong performed in Ghana in 1956 and later toured the Congo in 1960–1961. Dizzy Gillespie’s band performed in several African nations, including Senegal and Nigeria. Made by Belgian filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, this dizzying documentary essay explores the connection between the African American struggle during the 1960s and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) – a key yet downplayed actor in the Cold War rivalry between the U.S. and the USSR. For nearly 150 minutes, Grimonprez draws connections between how cultural ambassador Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong wielded jazz as a political tool, for instance, and the assassination of former Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba during the Atomic Age. Vibrant notes from a 1960s jazz melody contrast with historic political quotes on the screen, notably U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s chilling remark about Congolese Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba: “I wish he would fall into a river of crocodiles.” Then, Abbey Lincoln’s deep voice shakes the walls, accompanied by another historic quote – this time from Maya Angelou’s The Heart of a Woman (1961): “Tell ’em! Tell ’em about the goddamn Belgians.”

Soundtrack to a Coup d’État is bold, piercing, acidic, critical, and heartbreaking, but hasn’t yet broken into broader public awareness, especially compared to mainstream political documentaries. The film is a political-musical collage that leaves the viewer stunned by its hypnotic editing and its unconventional portrayal of the geopolitics of art. It presents the global political stage of 1960 as one grand performance, using humor through images like Nikita Khrushchev banging his shoe on the table at the UN General Assembly, set to a drumbeat.

In 1945, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima to end World War II. Most of the uranium constituting that weapon was extracted by Congolese laborers from Shinkolobwe mine in the DRC’s southern Katanga province – still under Belgian rule then. DRC was key to the U.S. atomic strategy during the Cold War, and Shinkolobwe mine was its lifeline. Considering the volatility of the Cold War during the era of African liberation, the United States prioritized blocking the USSR’s access to the Congo’s uranium reserves. When Pan-Africanist Patrice Lumumba won the country’s first democratic elections in 1960, the US feared how that would impact its access to critical minerals.

Correspondence in August 1960 between the Belgian Minister of African Affairs, d’Aspremont Lynden, and Prime Minister Eyskens, reveals the stakes: “We would forfeit billions from a Congo overseen by Lumumba. Our only hope: play the Katanga card.” Five months later, the Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated the assassination of Lumumba. This coup d’etat brought 32 years of dictatorship (1965-1997) under Mobutu Sese Seko. In the film, Grimonprez also uses images of cartoons of nuclear heads exploding to illustrate the cold-blooded political violence. The film intersperses Tesla advertisements, demonstrating Elon Musk’s company’s reliance on the DRC’s natural resources.

1960, known as “The Year of Africa”, saw 16 African countries gain independence from colonial rule and take seats at the United Nations. West of the Atlantic, a brilliant generation of Black musicians – including Louis Armstrong, Nina Simone, and John Coltrane – raised their voices in the U.S. and globally as part of a collective call for freedom from racial oppression. On the other hand, pan-Africanist leaders like Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah, and Congo’s Patrice Lumumba became global icons of decolonization.

“The Democratic Republic of the Congo is probably the only country in the world where independence has a truly musical meaning,” wrote Alan Brain, a Peruvian-American filmmaker who brought the movie The Rumba Kings to life. Along with Congolese music historian Manda Tchebwa, Brain detailed one of the country’s key political moments: the European tour of the African Jazz Orchestra, which played the iconic African hit “Indépendance Cha Cha”, created by the well-known Congolese musician Grand Kallé. The song embodied the hope and excitement of gaining independence, symbolizing the message and this specific slice of history. There could not have been a more perfect representation of the link between music and politics than a band of Congolese musicians touring Brussels and other European cities, as 150 Congolese politicians negotiated their country’s independence in Belgium’s capital.

The 1960s were turbulent. Two power blocs – American and Soviet, capitalist and communist – clashed in a global show of might without direct assault. The focus was on soft power, a form of influence used by governments as a nonviolent method of promoting their cultural, economic, and political values. Coined by political scientist Joseph Nye Jr. in the 1980s, the term ‘soft power’ usually refers to ways of spreading ideology through subtle, non-coercive means. Governments have actively utilised tools such as sports, the media, religion, and major industries like Silicon Valley and Hollywood to exert influence in other countries. And, of course, they have also relied on music as a key element. Grimonprez exemplifies this concept through jazz, laying bare how the United States strategically employed this popular musical genre to counter its communist adversary in Moscow. Renowned musicians such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie were dispatched as cultural ambassadors to Eastern Europe, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and other regions considered susceptible to communist influence, to project American cultural values and enhance the nation’s image on the global stage.

That is the essence of Grimonprez’s film: unravelling the role of music in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s independence process. His interest is also personal: he admitted knowing nothing of this connection as a Belgian. “I knew about the politics, but not the music. If politics is about dividing and conquering, music brings people together. Even if it’s a cry of rage, it can also be an energy for change,” he told The Guardian.

Jazz peaked globally during the era of artists like Duke Ellington, John Coltrane and Louis Armstrong. Simultaneously, outside influences like salsa and blues shaped genres like Congolese Rumba. I interviewed Nteranya Ginga, a brilliant 28-year-old Congolese writer and analyst, to better understand these hidden connections between jazz and politics. Nteranya goes further than the Grimonprez film: “Apart from what he shows in the movie, these exchanges created affinities between cultures. Even knowing that the U.S. was involved in Lumumba’s assassination, the human touch in cultural exchange made it relatable.” Nteranya believes the film challenges the conventional notion of diplomacy – typically associated with suited politicians in boardrooms – illustrating how culture, especially music, can shape political and social realities. “Soundtrack to a Coup d’État reminds me of something I learned at university. One professor told us, ‘Truck drivers are the best diplomats in the world.’ At first, I didn’t get it. Later, I understood that truck drivers cross regions, carrying culture and music with them, influencing everyone they meet.” For him, the film underscores the role of artists and creatives in political transformation: “It’s not just about formal policy talks – music, storytelling, and art are also powerful forces for change.”

One recurring phrase I heard while researching for this paper is that music is embedded in every aspect of life in the DRC, from birth to mourning songs, from the political to the poetic. Bob W. White, a professor of social anthropology at the University of Montreal, authored the book Rumba Rules: The Politics of Dance Music in Mobutu’s Zaire (Duke University Press, 2008). He argues that musicians in the post-Lumumba, Mobutu dictator era weren’t passive bystanders to politics. On the contrary, they were tools of the regime. Mobutu colluded with Western powers to capture Lumumba, and on January 17, 1961, the colonel oversaw his execution and saw his body dumped in a mass grave in Katanga.

Congolese musicians faced different forms of persecution that shifted across political eras, reflecting the changing priorities of each regime. Under Mobutu Sese Seko, the state imposed a cultural policy of authenticité, which required artists to promote a national identity aligned with the regime’s vision. Musicians who failed to conform to this ideological framework were often subject to censorship or denied access to government-controlled media and public platforms. “Under Mobutu,” writes White, “popular musicians in the DRC had become accustomed to a system of politics that rewarded them for making public displays of loyalty or staying out of politics altogether. In response to this system, they gradually developed strategies, including public praise, self-censorship, and new forms of showmanship, enabling them to thrive as artists and international stars. Over time, these strategies became so integral to their music that some musicians no longer viewed their relationship with power as problematic.”

In the post-Mobutu period, criticism of political elites continued to carry consequences: artists like Baloji, who addresses themes of identity, colonial legacy, and corruption, have encountered bans on performances or been marginalized within the country’s cultural circuits. Others, such as Franco Luambo, a Congolese composer and singer and one of the most musically and politically influential artists in the past century, navigated a more ambiguous relationship with power – his lyrics were occasionally censored. Yet, his popularity granted him a degree of protection. These dynamics reveal how music in the DRC has not only reflected political tension but also endured as a contested space of expression and resistance.

Twenty-eight years later, when Felix Tshisekedi – the current president of the Congo – came into power, artists resistant to political pressure still found themselves caught in similar political crosshairs. On February 14, 2025, Delphin Katembo – better known as Delcat Idengo, a popular Congolese musician – was shot in the head and killed in Goma after escaping from a prison during the M23 militia’s takeover of the city. Delcat had already been imprisoned since 2024, the previous year, awaiting trial for the bold messages in his music: songs that criticized the government, urged the people to stand up against corruption and authoritarianism, and called for the withdrawal of UN peacekeeping forces.

Two years ago, I met Trésor Nzengu, known by his stage name Menes La Plume, a Congolese musician at Dzaleka – a refugee camp 60 kilometers from Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. A camp whose name, ironically, translates from Chichewa to English as “I will not do it again” is a cruel name for a place that was once the most infamous prison in Malawi. Menes is a poet and rapper from Lubumbashi who arrived as a refugee to Malawi in 2008 after being forced to flee his country. The reason? He performed a live, defiant poem about the tense political climate under Joseph Kabila, who clung to power for 18 long years, from 2001 to 2019.

Menes is the founder and director of the Tumaini Festival – the Festival of Hope – the first and only arts festival held inside a refugee camp. He told me, “After arriving, I spent four years depressed, with no prospects, afraid of getting stuck.” During our conversation, he retraced his memories from 2012: walking through the camp, hearing the echoes of a Somali song, and watching the dust rise in rhythm to a kid dancing to Congolese rumba. “I told myself, ‘I have to do something,’”. He proposed a cultural project to bring young people together in a healthy avenue where everyone could express their art. Thus, Trésor Nzengu founded the Dzaleka Cultural Association, which later evolved into the nonprofit Tumaini Letu (“Our Hope,” in Kiswahili).Two years later, in 2014, they held the festival’s first edition, and from that moment, Menes became a champion of refugee rights in Dzaleka. The refugees’ human rights situation may not have changed, but Menes has certainly achieved his goal of nurturing hope in the camp.

The DRC is often cast in a reductive light by the Western media by fixating solely on war, poverty, displacement, and natural disasters. This reductive narrative diminishes the second-largest in Africa into a monolith. What happens in Kinshasa has little to do with Kivu, due to both the geographical distance and each region’s unique idiosyncrasies.

How can we understand Congo from new angles? One compelling starting point was to meet the cultural actors driving change.

Mwalimu Mageni, a teacher and musician who educates young people across East Africa about the importance of an Afrocentric approach to music, says, “For those outside the country, we try to make as much noise. My approach is to help my students understand that the problem lies in our mindset. Beyond the war, we are the generation that came right after colonization and still feel its effects. The division is tangible. The vastness of the DRC has divided people, resulting in a lack of genuine connection from East to West. We use language and music to unify.”

I also met Freed Mushaga in a Nairobi café to discuss the gaps in the cultural diplomacy portrayed in Grimonprez’s film – a diplomacy that governments have used for decades as a form of public relations. Freed is a 25-year-old jurist, singer, and songwriter from Bukavu who fled his country at the age of eighteen in search of artistic freedom. I met him at Cheche Bookshop in Nairobi, where he was one of three panellists along with Nteranya in a discussion titled Congo Crisis: A Discussion on Hope and Action. The focus of the discussion wasn’t just on DRC’s problems, but their roots – and the need to reshape the narrative. The first words Freed said were: “This song is written in imaginary languages. You might not understand the lyrics, but that’s not what matters.” Seconds later, he sang a song called Lapwony that seemed to stop time in the bookstore, which, according to him, has no translation. “My goal is to create an atmosphere that allows listeners to reflect, feel, and connect with themes like freedom or struggle on a deeper level.”

During the decolonization process of the 1960s, the U.S. and European countries used music to influence African societies, as shown in Soundtrack to a Coup d’État. “What surprises me is not that they did it, but how clever they were in recognizing the power of music – something many still underestimate. Music is powerful, but that power can be used for good or manipulation”, Freed says. Governments and organizations run cultural programs to promote African arts, but their real agendas often lie elsewhere. Western institutions may claim to support African culture, yet they frequently impose their own languages and ideologies – French programs promote French, the British Council pushes English, and the Goethe-Institut advances German.

Cultural initiatives are often accompanied by highly publicized agreements that serve as distractions, while behind the scenes, billion-dollar deals perpetuate the exploitation of Africa’s resources. For example, France’s efforts to reshape its image in Africa are evident in its rapprochement with Malawi. After more than 20 years without a diplomatic presence, on November 14, 2023, Chrysoula Zacharopoulou, the Secretary of State for Development, Francophonie, and International Partnerships, visited the country and announced the opening of a new Alliance Française center in Blantyre. “France is back,” the embassy declared on its X (formerly Twitter) account. Zacharopoulou also visited Mozambique and Zambia to strengthen relations following France’s setbacks in the Sahel. However, behind the guise of cultural diplomacy, France revealed that the state-owned energy giant EDF would lead the consortium to build and operate a major hydroelectric project on the Zambezi River: a €4.5 billion dam aimed at increasing Mozambique’s electricity production capacity by more than 50%. Rwanda follows a similar strategy under the slogan Visit Rwanda, using events like cycling tours, Formula 1 sponsorships, and concerts by global stars such as John Legend to promote tourism and improve its image, despite ongoing criticism over its role in the current conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Yet, despite these political agendas, many musicians engaged with the cultural diplomacy of the Cold War on their own, using the opportunities to build international networks, access new resources, and reach broader audiences. These exchanges sometimes led to genuine collaboration and the creation of hybrid musical styles – Congolese rumba, for instance, fused Afro-Cuban sounds with local rhythms. Eventually, they influenced music scenes far beyond the continent. Tabu Ley Rochereau, a pioneer of this genre, Joseph Kabasele (Le Grand Kallé), creator of “Indépendance Cha Cha,” and Franco Luambo are examples of artists who were not just tools of foreign policy – they subverted its intentions by using state-sponsored platforms to assert African cultural identity and expand their reach on the global stage. The strategic use of culture in diplomacy is unmistakable. “Countries that profit from Africa’s natural wealth don’t invest in cultural programs out of love for our heritage – they do it because they understand the power of African voices, and they aim to control or co-opt them”, Freed remarks.

Freed doesn’t just critique cultural soft power; he takes action, with a guitar and a voice. In 2019, he launched Bukavu Slam Sessions in the DRC, a spoken word collective creating safe spaces for artistic expression. In 2022, he launched Jua, his most impactful project yet, which uses music to spotlight Congo and the Great Lakes region, highlighting artists who inspire change. “We wanted to revive African cultural heritage, which we believe has been fading due to globalization. That’s why we organized a concert with nearly thirteen artists from different parts of the DRC. We realized it wasn’t just a concert but a gathering with a message. It brought artists together to address social issues through music.” But it didn’t stop there. “After collecting our insights, we met with collaborators and created the Jewel World Music Meeting. We have aimed to unite East African musicians through masterclasses, salons, conferences, and music therapy sessions. One key element is what we call the Music Pattern. These activities aim to counter hate speech and foster unity. Jewel means ‘sun,’ and represents both enlightenment and healing.”

Nteranya and Freed are two activist figures seeking ways to bring critical attention to the conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Freed does so through art; Nteranya through academia – as a speaker at conferences and events, and as the author of books like From Birthing Waters, which explores how far people will go for their dreams and for those they give life to. Nteranya’s reflection captures the core of this research: “Unlike in Europe, where history is archived in books and museums, much of our history is preserved through music and oral traditions. Artists like Franco have used music to tell stories – not just love stories, but also political narratives. In the 1970s, a song celebrating Lumumba as a hero emerged. This tradition continues today. Music is deeply integrated into Congolese culture – anytime families or communities gather, music and dance are present. It fosters joy and a sense of community, reminding people that there is still life beyond conflict”.

The story of the Democratic Republic of Congo isn’t just about coups or Cold War power plays – it’s also a story told through rhythm, resistance, and reinvention. Soundtrack to a Coup d’État invites us to see music not as something that plays in the background of history, but as a key player in it – used by empires, reclaimed by artists, and still resonating in the voices of those who won’t be silenced. From jazz diplomacy to censored lyrics, protest songs to untranslatable melodies sung in refugee camps, the Congo’s musical landscape speaks to deeper struggles over memory, identity, and power.