A Transatlantic Heritage Enters UNESCO Memory
When the Intergovernmental Committee of UNESCO inscribed “Congolese rumba” on the Intangible Cultural Heritage list in December 2021, delegates applauded what they termed “a living testimony to Africa’s dialogue with the Afro-Caribbean world” (UNESCO 2021). Yet the celebratory roll call, filled with illustrious male names from Wendo Kolosoy to Franco Luambo, was strikingly mute on its feminine voices. Franco-Algerian filmmaker and former minister for La Francophonie, Yamina Benguigui, recalls the moment as a revelation: “Not a single woman was cited, as if the genre had evolved in a male vacuum.” The oversight has now become the narrative spine of her feature-length documentary Rumba, the Ladies’ Plot, premiered on Canal+ Docs and currently touring diplomatic cultural centres.
Colonial Rubber, Urban Ballrooms and the Birth of a Dance
Benguigui’s camera opens on colonial photographs of Leopoldville and Brazzaville at the turn of the twentieth century, where forced rubber extraction financed Art Deco avenues but also generated a nocturnal counter-culture in the cité — a culture in which music and dance functioned as subtle acts of resistance. Historians interviewed in the film, including Professor Scholastique Dianzinga of Marien Ngouabi University, trace the rumba’s syncopated heartbeat to cross-Atlantic returns of Afro-Cuban son records, assimilated by dockworkers and military brass bands. Women, though absent from public archives, were omnipresent in domestic dance circles, perfecting what contemporaries called the danse du nombril, a choreography that physically re-united male and female bodies so often segregated by forced labour regulations (Le Monde 2022).
Forgotten Divas and the Grammar of Vocal Emancipation
Lucie Eyenga, first female lead singer in a Congolese orchestra, emerges as a symbolic forerunner. Archival radio sessions unearthed by Benguigui reveal Eyenga’s crystalline timbre and emphatic diction, qualities that compelled male bandleaders to recalibrate their arrangements. Her successors—Antoinette Mabiala, Abeti Masikini, Mbilia Bel—transformed the stage into a forum of coded commentary on post-independence governance, marriage and urban precariousness. Musicologist Jean-Claude Ngoyi notes in the film that a high vocal register became a “linguistic semaphore of dissent,” at once palatable to censors and legible to female audiences. Despite such influence, royalties remain elusive; Mbilia Bel tells the director that she is “still labouring to receive author’s rights on songs that fill dancefloors from Pointe-Noire to Paris.” The documentary thus intersects cultural heritage with the legal economy of creative industries, an agenda consistent with the Congolese government’s recent push for stronger intellectual-property enforcement (Agence d’Information d’Afrique 2023).
Soft Power, National Image and the Sassou Nguesso Era
By foregrounding female rumba pioneers, the film extends President Denis Sassou Nguesso’s broader diplomatic strategy of leveraging cultural assets to enhance regional stability and international partnerships. The government’s support for touring exhibitions on rumba, including last year’s showcase at the Palais des Congrès in Brazzaville, signals an awareness that cultural diplomacy can consolidate a positive national narrative without dismissing historical complexities. Diplomatic observers interviewed by Benguigui underscore that a nuanced depiction of rumba aligns with Congo-Brazzaville’s commitments under the 2005 UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, reaffirmed during the African Union Cultural Summit in Rabat (AU Communiqué 2022).
Gendered Resilience and Post-Conflict Healing
Beyond the stage, Benguigui follows a civil-society programme in Pointe-Noire where survivors of gender-based violence employ rumba choreography as somatic therapy, reconnecting with their bodies through the ‘touch of the belly’ motif inherited from ancestral dance. Psychologist Sandrine Mavoungou describes the initiative as “a culturally resonant method of trauma integration.” Her testimony echoes findings by the World Health Organization that culturally tailored art therapy accelerates psychosocial recovery in post-conflict settings (WHO 2020). The sequence adds empirical depth to the film’s claim that rumba functions as both economic asset and social adhesive.
A Future Score for Cultural Equity
Rumba, the Ladies’ Plot is not merely a retrospective correction; it is a forward-looking proposition. Benguigui reveals plans for a scholarship fund to mentor female sound engineers in Brazzaville’s emerging studio scene, an initiative welcomed by the Ministry of Culture and the Arts. Strategists at the Central African Economic and Monetary Community suggest that such programmes could diversify cultural exports and strengthen non-oil revenue streams, a policy consonant with Congo-Brazzaville’s 2022-2026 National Development Plan. As the closing credits roll over archival footage of Lucie Eyenga smiling into a crackling microphone, viewers are reminded that memory, like rhythm, is most powerful when it includes every voice in the ensemble.