Date: Sat, 17 May 1997 23:37:08 +0200 (MET DST)
Subject: M-G: Congo: Twist à Léo - V-Day in Kinshasa


Congo: Twist =E0 Léo - V-Day in Kinshasa
[Posted: 17.05.97]


LE TWIST!

I still have that old 45 rpm vinyl record, actually made
in Congo (i.e. the country later named "Zaire"), with
the tune "Twist =E0 Léo".

"Léo" is short for "Léopoldville", of course, as
Kinshasa was called then.

Reports now, at 18.00 CET (16.00 GMT) are saying that
AFDL troops have entered the city and have bloodlessly
captured i.a. the so-called "Parliament" building and
the one housing the radio/television station (ex-)
"Voice of Zaire". This to the great joy of the people.

So today it's Twist =E0 Léo - or whatever; probably now
in 1997, the word "twist" wouldn't make most people
think of a dance style first of all anyway.

It's also Syttende Mai of course, the National Day of
Norway, the country where I was born (though I since
long am a Swede). And in Peru, the PCP in 1980 had the
good taste to start its people's war against the
reactionary regime precisely on this same date.


MULTIPLE CELEBRATION DAY

So I'm putting on that old record. Sorry you can't hear
it!

And how about posting some notes to that good old
Marxism-General list in this connection, telling the
nice people there (and the less nice too, but that
can't be helped) about some memories it arouses and
some associations it brings to my mind? Concerning a
few bits of the history of the last 37 years, which
I've experienced in various indirect ways, and on a
couple of matters of culture too, perhaps. I think I
shall do that, letting other and really more important
matters rest for a little while. It will be more fun
writing a kind of rapsody or hotch-potch on this theme.

That record must have been made in 1960 (if not in 1959)
and brought to Sweden by one of the soldiers from this
country serving in the UN forces sent there then. I
picked it up at a second-hand store at some time in the
60s and at one period played it a lot so it's quite
scratchy now. Its atmosphere, "ideology", if you like,
appealed to me very much and still does.

One connection is: In 1960, there was figthing in the
Congo, today there is once more - only now, the good
guys (& chicks) are winning!

Yes I know of course, after the military victory, the
really hardest part is still to come, organizing and
building everything up and fighting subversion and
degeneration, but who would have imagined only six
months ago that things in that important African
country would take such a positive turn as they have?

And there isn't even complete military victory yet.
But it does seem to be imminent. Yesterday, the old
oppressor, fleecer and destroyer of the country, the
lackey of the US and other imperialists Mobutu, stepped
down. Today, even his "old guard" doesn't seem willing
to try to make "a last stand" - sensible of them.
Some gunfire has been heard in Kinshasa, reports here
say, but seemingly not as part of any real battle.


NEW TIMES, NEW MUSIC

In 1960, "Twist" was "the new thing", for quite a lot
of people in many countries. Not that I on my part ever
learned it. The only record too that I have with it is
precisely this one, which contains a jazzed-up variant
of the style, the kind of variants I like.

The record label is "Surboum" - ever heard of that? -
and below the label name it says "African Jazz"; the
tune "Twist =E0 Léo" is characterized as a "Twist" and
said to be written by "Manu". Playing it, it reads in
Anglo-French, is "Manu Dibango et l'African Saoul-
Quintet" - "Saoul" in French of course meaning "Tipsy";
this is none of your more deep-heavy-brooding things.

While I cannot convey the music, there's some lyrics
that I can give you a brief idea of, in part in French
and in part in what seems to be Swahili and/or "scat" -
a term known to all today?  I'll not try to translate
but only transcribe, something like this:

"AEAEAEA-(Chorus:)-AAAAAAAA, AEAEAEA-EEEEEEE......, Oui,
mon corps balance, aha, en dansant le twist."...."Oh,
le twist, c'est le jeu =E0 Léopoldville"..... "Shubliabob,
shubliabob, shobliabob, ba-do-dee-te-sayy...." "J'ai
perdu ma t=EAte, elle reste ici, oui, oui, oui, j'ai
perdu la t=EAte en dansant le twist a Léopoldville....".

I hope you get the drift.

On the back side there's "Dizzy Me", called a "Madison",
not bad either.

Speaking of "Dizzy", I also have on one record that
rendering, in 1946 or something, of "Congo Blues" where
John Birks "Dizzy" Gillespie, playing together of course
with Charlie "Yardbird" Parker and some other members
of that gang, blows the roof half away and (the same as
in some other things of theirs from that time) heralds
the coming of a new age. Some of you never heard that
stuff? Please accept my commiserations - I was
pleasantly surprised anyway last year when, starting to
follow the old "M1", I learned that there were people
there who did know and understand it. Those things IMO
 - still - are a vital part of late 20th century
culture, the absolutely best part too, if you ask me.
That tune I mentioned actually is one of my reasons for
liking the name "Congo" better than "Zaire".


"TRYING TO COME BACK"

Long ago, I somewhere read about how some of the leaders
of the Black Panther movement in the USA were watching
some people do that new thing, the Twist, in 1960 or so.
"Look at all them white kids dancing like mad", one of
them said. - "Yes, they're trying to come back." "Come
back, from where?" "From wherever they've been."

Even at that time, I thought that was somehow a deep and
correct thought, and much later, after having read such
books as Engels: "The Origins of the Family, the State
and Private Property" (it's on the Net today, in the
Marx-Engels archive) and Evelyn Reed: "The Development
of Woman" (USA, 1974), I've been able to see more
clearly *what* the comment was about, I think at least:
Something having to do with things in this century
developing towards a classless society, such as that
which existed for a long time thousands of years ago,
only now on another and advanced level, a "world
village" instead of those old isolated ones, and there
arising cultural phenomena which are an expression of
this trend.


NOT ONLY THAT PASSING FAD "LE TWIST"

In some cultural-history books etc, you can read that
"The Twist was the first dance in a long time where
people moved their hips", which perhaps is not quite
true, but it seems that this at least was a style that
much more people "got on to" than certain others that
had emerged some years or decades earlier. After a few
years, it went away too, of course. The "Rock'n Roll"
music and dance style, originating in 1954 with its
typical 3 beats to the bar, still is very much with us,
in some more or less changed forms; I don't have to
tell anybody today about that.

But what probably is unknown to many today and which I
on my part only have got to know more about fairly
recently is how enthusiastically some earlier and
really much more fiery, advanced and softly-pulsating
music and dance styles, likewise originating from some
sorts of black-white or African-European cultural
mixtures in the USA, caught on in many other countries
too, even if not at all so broadly among people in
general.

For instance, the "swing" jazz music ( 4 beats to the
bar of course) and corresponding  "lindy hop" or "bug"
dance style originally from the 1930:s caught on so much
here in Sweden too, that when Lionel Hampton's band
visited Gothenburg in 1953 and walked down from the
scene in among the audience, as they used to do, in
that city's venerable ("classical") Concert Hall, that
audience tore down many of the seats etc in the hall in
order to get space to lindy-hop. Big scandal! The next
week, when "Hamp" played in Eskilstuna, members of the
wrestling club there were engaged by the organisers to
surround the stage to prevent such things from
happening again. Something subversive about that whole
culture.

In an earlier posting, which I've repeated too, I
quoted a very silly and reactionary statement by
(Mao Zedong's wife) Jiang Qing in 1966 against that
culture; I shall not repeat it again here. But I'd
point to that as one clear example of a certain, even
if of course subordinate, trend that there no doubt
*was* within the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution
in China too, having to do with that country's relative
lack of modernity in general, even if its system of
society of course was advanced, was socialism.


SOME NOTES ON 1960 ETC

In Congo/Zaire, history has "made a loop" in its
spiralling development: Armed conflict in 1996-97 just
as there was in 1960 etc, only now "on a higher level
of development".

I on my part took little interest in politics in 1960;
that summer, I was on my first somewhat longer trip
abroad, to a city whose history too "has made a loop",
if you like, it formerly being known as "S:t Peters-
burg", at the time I was there as "Leningrad" and today
once more "S:t Petersburg" - the enormous problems of
its citizens now are well known; in 1960, it was quite
a nice and to me, interesting place even if I, being
there for 14 days as part of the Swedish team in the
students' team world championship in chess, at the time
was rather bored by its considerable cultural and
historical treaures. What I remember I did notice and
like was something that differed from anything you
were liable to see in Sweden, some big posters showing -
because of the conflict going on in Congo at the time -
a big black man throwing off his chains.

Of course, this was mainly or even wholly hypocracy on
the part of the then Soviet regime - which I by no
means, even then, had any positive thoughts about in
general; I tended to dislike governemnts, I think I
remember. Sweden too was involved in the Congo conflict
in 1960, sending an important part of the UN troop
contingent and among other things controlling a big
part of the airspace, against the Katanga secessionists,
with its four J-29F fighter planes sent there, and of
course the then UN General Secretary was a Swede, Dag
Hammarskj=F6ld, who later died in that air crash, whether
mysteriously or not.

What was, more precisely, the real role of the UN and
that of Sweden, in the Congo in 1960 etc? I still
haven't found that out, and it's not very high up on my
agenda for finding out things. The same goes for the
role of the then Soviet Union - which I believe there
are reasons to suspect was not a very positive one at
all. 


MILITARY EXPERIENCE FROM THE CONGO CONFLICT

Some such actually became rather general knowledge
here in Sweden, in the early 1960s, I mean, because
of this country's (of course rather small) military
involvement, otherwise a relatively rare thing here in
this century (there were some volounteer units in
Finland during its the 1939-40 Winter War with the
Soviet Union).

In 1960, the main small-arms equipment of the Swedish
army was the "kpist 45" (Swedish-made machine pistol,
development year 1945) which fired 9 mm pistol ammo, a
good weapon for close-in fighting (as I learned in my
military basic training in 1961-62) but in the Congo it
proved insufficient at longer ranges; some Swedish UN
forces had gotten into difficulties in firefights
against opponents i.a. of the Baluba tribe, who had
automatic weapons firing rifle-type ammunition - i.e.
the type of small-arms originally called "Sturmgewehr"
in German. As a result, the Swedish army later was
equipped with such too, the (license-produced) "AK 4"
and later the "AK 5", both in use still today - while
service personel retain those "kpist 45" which are so
comfortably easy to handle and disassemble.

That experience also caused a derogatory use, for some
years, of the term "Balubas" for foreigners in Sweden,
at least those from some non-European parts of the
world. Getting licked in armed fighting is not popular!

Another thing I remember from my army basic training
days (Sweden had and still has general conscription)
that had to do with Congo was an armoured car that
was tested by our scout unit; it had originally been
manufactured in Sweden for use by the Belgian army in
Congo but from 1960 on, that order had been cancelled
and "we" got the thing instead; I - to the extent
that I was reflecting on such matters at all in those
days - rather liked that sort of developments. But
I was more impressed by, and made more reflections on,
something else that I learned of in connection with
the Congo, from someone who had been in the fighting
there: "The worst thing were the mortars", he said.
Meaning, you weren't even safe in your foxhole (the
Swedish regulation 140 x 90 x 60 cm one, which other-
wise seemed liable to protect you from most bad things).


UNDERSTANDING A LITTLE MORE ABOUT COLONIALISM

Anothr thing that I remember from rather long ago in
connection precisely with the Congo was a chat I had,
on some party or other in 1969 or so, with a coal-
black guy from that country. I said that I liked
British humour - "we Norwegians" (today of course
I'm only an ex-such) traditionally have been rather
Agliophile, for certain historical reasons - which the
Congolese guy didn't have any appreciation for at all.
"Do you know what the British have done in Africa?",
he asked me. "Real humor, that can exist, that I can
understand, on the part of a people oppressed such as
the Czech etc, not on the part of the British". This
gave me some food for thought. I realized that he
was basically right, and that chat contributed towards
some basic rethinking on my part. I still today
appreciate P.G Woodehouse, for instance, though - his
behaving like an idiot in France in 1940, getting
captured and then put to some use by Hitler's forces
doesn't change that either.

Now, finishing what I started on some hours ago, I'm
posting this "Congo celebration" May 17 "cultural"
hotch-potch which I've had a certain urge to write. The
news fom Kinshasa at midnight (CET; 22.00 GMT) no doubt
will be interesting; I havent't listened to any since
18.00.

Rolf M.









     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---