Musicians from the villages surrounding Kinshasa, Congo didn’t learn to read music from a European staff, Kinois baritone Samuel Niaty explains. Instead, they adapted their own system of hand-drawn symbols to learn Western Classical music.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Niaty says, musicians from Congo Centrale—the villages on the outskirts of Kinshasa—developed a notation system of dots, slashes, and dashes written on a chalkboard, which they used to learn traditional songs together.
When the musicians moved into the city in the following years, they joined orchestras and choirs that performed music by European composers like Beethoven and Mozart. The musicians saw the similarities between the Western musical staff and their own notation system, and they adapted their system to fit the staff.
With their knowledge of the complete European notation system, Congolese musicians could compose and arrange music in a way that was recognizable to Europeans. This recognition opened up the world to Kinois music, allowing musicians to travel the globe performing their compositions and garnering accolades once reserved for European musicians.
Since they adapted their own notation system to fit the European one, however, Niaty says they never lost sight of what makes their music uniquely Congolese.
By Niccolo Bechtler