Kwassa Kwassa and soukous are more than related: They are exactly the same thing. Soukous bands always have dancers (as named, integral members of the band!!) and the dance those dancers dance is often referred to as kwassa kwassa --- which makes soukous music kwassa kwassa music.

Sean Barlow's Afropop Glossary defines Kwassa Kwassa as: "Dance popular in Zaire in late 80s. Later, in other parts of Africa, became a synonym for Zairean music following the success of Kanda Bongo Man's African tours." Well, Kanda Bongo Man is one of the greatest soukous stars, and his biggest hit is a song called...(wait for it)...KWASSA KWASSA!

"Zairean music" (now called "Congolese music" again, as they changed the name of Zaire back to Congo after the death of the ruler who had initially named it Zaire) is the electric guitar-led rumba also called soukous, or sometimes just kwassakwassa.

And I have another anecdote about this: Last week I was at the US-Africa Business Summit, and at one point found myself dancing soukous style as an incredibly great soukous-style performance raged onstage (it was the spectacular Suzannah Owiyo from Kenya, who is not basically a soukous artist but was playing a congolese-style number at this particular moment) -- and this African businessperson or diplomat or something walks up to me, sees how I'm dancing and says "Kwassa-Kwassa!!" I stopped dancing and said -- "Hey, I've always wanted to know what "kwassakwassa" means! Do you know?" And he says: "Oh, I don't know, we just say kwassakwassa to mean that Congo kind of music and dancing..." I think he was from Tanzania

pant-pant! That's probably more than you wanted to know about KwassaKwassa on a Tuesday morning ... But hey join the Soukous Guitar! tribe and we'll tell you even more about the hottest electric guitar music in the world - !!!
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