Name: Boma Bango!
Start: 2025-12-07T19:00:00-06:00
Location: 407 Lee Avenue, Lafayette, LA, United States, Louisiana 70501

Boma Bango takes the hypnotic, reverb drenched, tremolo-ed electric guitar heavy music from the 1960s in the Congo and reimagines it as if it came out of some humid outdoor bar in Southwest Louisiana. Boma Bango formed after Daniel Coolik became infatuated with 1950s and 1960s Congolese Rumba. A music originally influenced by Cuban records from the 1930s and 40s and infused with melodies and instruments from the Congo.
Boma Bango, by taking musical cues from Congolese luminaries as Franco Luambo & le TPOK Jazz, L'Orchestra African Fiesta with Docteur Nico and Tabu Ley Rochereau, and Le Grand Kallé et l'African Jazz, has strived to create their own kind of improvisational music based upon the sounds from this golden age. The band was started in 2018 by musical compatriots Daniel Coolik (electric guitar/electric mandolin), Trey Boudreaux (bass), Megan Constantin (vocals/percussion) Doug Garrison (drums) and is sometimes joined by Aurora Nealand (saxophones). They reinvent old songs and write new ones in Louisiana French just as the Congelse wrote songs in Lingala. In the same way jazz musicians took the Great American Songbook in the 1940s and 50s and now take from popular music, Boma Bango has reworked these beautiful and almost forgotten melodies to create an alluring, tropical, and exciting new sound.