Dancing on the Rhythm of Léopoldville. Nostalgia, Urban Critique and Generational Difference in Kinshasa's TV Music Shows

This article addresses social and symbolic differences in contemporary Kinshasa as these are expressed in and mediated via widely watched music TV shows such as Bana Léo (“The Children of Léo[poldville]”) and Sentiment Lipopo (“The feeling of Lipopo”), which have become extremely popular in Kinshasa (“Leopoldville” as the city was called during colonial times, or affectionately “Lipopo”) since the early 2000s. Recorded in local nightclubs, these shows depict elderly people performing cha cha cha, merengue, polka piquée, bolero, rumba and other international dance styles on Congolese rumba music dating from the late colonial and early postcolonial periods. Intimately tied to the emergence of a new category of elderly people in Kinshasa, these shows confirm boundaries between the “urban elderly” and (a) the younger generations and (b) the “elders from the village”. A “practical nostalgia” is performed that aims at restoring elders’ value and esteem in the African city. The Bana Léo genre thus illustrates the ambiguity of the production of difference in the cultural domain. Difference between generations might be expressed in the space of this genre, yet at the same time it formulates a cultural attempt to overcome that distance and to create conviviality among the generations.Integrated in a special issue on "Un/making difference through performance and mediation", co-edited by Heike Becker and Dorothea Schulzstatus: publishe