The Congo Crisis and the Rise of a Pan-African Musical Politics

In February 1961, it was revealed that the Congolese independence leader Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the new Democratic Republic of the Congo, had been executed the month before. Rebel Congolese allied with Belgium, rulers of the Congo from 1885–1960, and the American CIA had conspired to kill one of the shining stars of the newly liberated African continent. The operation proceeded under instructions from President Eisenhower.

Postcolonial African, Asian, and other “nonaligned...