Soukous
While international audiences today are most familiar with Afropop from West and South Africa, many of the popular styles throughout the continent are indebted to music emanating from Central Africa, known generically within Africa as Congolese music and abroad as soukous. As with the early West African genres of highlife and juju, the roots of soukous began in the early decades of the twentieth century as radio and a burgeoning music industry within the French- and Belgian-colonized Congo region of Central Africa introduced African audiences to the current popular music styles from Europe and the Western hemisphere. These were dominated by jazz and, later, Latin music, particularly the Afro-Cuban rumba, which African musicians considered derivative of their own polyrhythmic traditions.