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By the 1970s, popular music in Zaire (now Congo) was ripe for yet another shake-up. The early wave of ‘60s Independence-era guitar bands had given way to orchestra-sized leviathans packing large brass sections which still have fervent partisans today. In 1969, a Kinshasa-based percussionist, D.V. Muanda (a minority tenders this honor to drummer Bakunde Ilo Pablo), started a band called Zaïko Langa Langa. Most sources say that the word Zaïko devolved from Zaïre ya bakoko—“Zaïre of our ancestors” in Lingala—while others report that it was simply a contraction of Zaïre and Congo, while Langa Langa referred to a medicinal root packing an intense psychedelic wallop.
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