Francophilia
By Richard Gehr, eMusic Contributor
One figure stands off to the side and slightly obscured amid the pantheon of African bandleaders. The Congolese superstar Franco - christened François Luambo Makiadi in 1938, dead of AIDS in 1989 - is the least internationally-acclaimed among afropop giants such as Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, and Youssou N'Dour. With a biography at least as tragically complex as Fela's, Franco lived large, died sadly, and left hundreds of hours of some of the world's… more »