How to conduct a Soukous tune

Soukous is a genuine Congolese music style. Rooted in traditional guitar picking and percussion, it  gradually blended with Cuban dance music and modern instrumentation. Becoming increasingly popular it made its way all over Africa and its diaspora.  

Basically soukous is an ecstatic dance music performed by local guitar bands. Usually it is performed by 2-3 electric guitars along with electric bass, drums, percussion and soloists (singer, saxophonist). Based on recurrent harmonies the guitars play highly intertwined, repetitive, and increasingly dynamic. Too, there is a typical sound setting with strong reverb, flanger, phaser etc., a strong Afro-Cuban rhythm and non-stop improvisation.

Tsetse Music  demonstrates some basic principles of sound and structure.

Guitar 1
Lennox Wilson starts with a  catchy repetitive  guitar line; this line will serve as harmonic base .

Guitar 2
A second repetitive  line is blended :

Guitar 3
Jeff Wanton’s guitar adds rhythm and a typical reverb modulation:

All Guitars
Mixed together they sound like this:

Bass
As rhythm is essential in all African music,  Dick Burns adds his percussive bass:

DrumsIPercussion
Modern drum kit playing an Afro-Rumba pattern:

Brass Section
Modern soukous  normally would add brass rifts like this one by Mr. Huddleston:

                            All tracks blended together make the final soukous tune “Congo Fiesta”:
Final Version

To listen to  Tsetse’s real version of “Congo Fiesta 2”, go here