Interview with Alan Brain on his film about The Rumba Kings
The Rumba Kings - Alan Brain: I couldn’t have made this film if I wasn’t Latino.
Graham Douglas
Alan Brain grew up in the late 70s in a middle-class neighbourhood in Lima, listening to Afro Caribbean and/or Latin music. The most common type of music on the radio in Peru was Salsa: Héector Lavoe, El Gran Combo, Ruben Blades, Fania All Stars, Ismael Miranda, Willy Colón, Fruko y sus Tesos, Oscar D’Leon etc. “That was the soundtrack of my childhood” he says. “And my parents, specifically my mother, loved the Cuban singer Benny Morée, and La Sonora Matancera. So, that Latin and AfroCuban music element was very present in my life.”
After many years making short films for TV and commercials he wanted a change of direction and was recruited by the UN to work on humanitarian missions, in East Timor and then in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
As he says: “I had to wait until I was in Congo (in 2008 for six years) and I was 40 years old to listen to a song by Franco Luambo and the OK Jazz. If they had been on the radio in Lima, during my childhood it would have been a huge success since it is so close to Latin music. We never heard of them, even though in the late seventies, OK Jazz was a continental success in Africa...So, I'm doing my best to help to bridge that gap, to open the scope of the music that gets into the mainstream, to enrich it.”
By that time Cuban music had become a powerful influence on Congolese music, which Alan characterises as a coming home of originally African music in the form of Cuban Son. This Afro-Latino connection made musical communication instant: “When I met these Congolese music legends in Kinshasa they were so happy that I knew these songs and we could sing them together. Kuka Mathieu knew the famous Celia Cruz song "El Yerberito Moderno" (The little modern Herb Seller) but he had been singing it for years making his own lyrics. He was really happy when I told him about the meaning of the real lyrics.
His first feature film The Rumba Kings tells the story of the first phase of development of this music which quickly became hugely influential across Africa during the period of decolonisation in the 1960s. Although no recordings survive from before 1960, the music- lives on having evolved through at least two more generations to present-day Endombolo.
Congolese Rumba is now being considered by UNESCO for possible inclusion in the list of Intangible World Cultural Heritage. And the film has won Best Feature Length Documentary in the Festival du Film Panafricain de Cannes
Alan talked by Zoom to LatinoLife about all this, and his fascination with the deep musical connections that have bounced back and forth between Africa and Latin America. The full interview with images can be accessed here:
https://www.latinolife.co.uk/articles/i-couldnt-have-made-film-if-i-wasnt-latino