Nylon-String Virtuoso Niwel Tsumbu Blends Congolese Roots with Global Sounds

Niwel Tsumbu’s latest release, Milimo, is several things: a feast of fascinating flavors, a passionate mission statement, a showcase for deftly executed polyrhythms, and a snapshot of ancient and modern approaches to acoustic guitar. At its heart, however, it’s a solo album by a Congolese virtuoso who lives in Ireland and plays like someone who doesn’t think in genres.

Tsumbu grew up in the capital city of Kinshasa, where he played for a year and a half (“just long enough to not develop bad habits,” he says) before meeting his mentor Crispin Ngoy, who imparted the importance of inclusive listening and proper technique. Classical music on the radio, imported Western records, and the sounds of Congolese pop’s golden age—six-string heroes like Rigo Star and Maika Munan, as well as legendary bands like OK Jazz and L’Orchestre Afrisa International with iconic guitarists Franco Luambo Makiadi and Tabu Ley Rochereau—all left deep impressions. Tsumbu says music school was “too slow” for him, but local musicians steeped in older, indigenous traditions gave him plenty to digest. (Tsumbu, an articulate and enthusiastic teacher, shares these lessons through courses in fingerstyle, African ensemble, and Congolese guitar at worldmusicmethod.com.) 

On a 2004 trip to Ireland to visit a friend, he met his wife and stayed, setting down roots that have led to his most consistent collaboration, with percussionist Éamonn Cagney, and a varied discography that includes Uh! É Za Nzela Molayi (2006), Song of the Nations (2009), S’All Vibration (2011), and Art of the Duo (2021).

Milimo, recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios, manages to be both barebones and full bodied, featuring 13 brief pieces. The album opens with “Rubato,” which brings to mind a devilishly bouncing ball before Tsumbu evokes flamenco on his Taylor 312ce-N with D’Addario normal-tension Pro-Arté nylons. Paper under the strings brings a joyfully African harp flavor to the title track. Three etudes pack lots of information into their short span, conjuring influences that include Bach and Steve Reich, whose “Electric Counterpoint” Tsumbu once performed in front of the composer. 

“Tirizah” is contemplative but rhythmically and harmonically fascinating. “Masta,” an arrangement of a traditional tune, showcases his impeccable time and soulful vocals, while “Polyphony” is the clearest example of Tsumbu’s ability to achieve contrary motion by using intervals. “Gracias Paco” and “Afrique Modern” are classical, flamenco, and African all at once, as is the jazz-adjacent “Tears of Joy.” The album ends with two tunes, the reverb-drenched “The Silence Within” and the wide-ranging “To Be Continued,” whose unresolved nature hints at future adventures.

Tsumbu’s diverse performance credits include Ling Peng, Sinéad O’Connor, Buena Vista Social Club, and Baaba Maal, and his down-to-earth social media presence and collaborations with Rhiannon Giddens (including the Silk Road Project and 2021’s They’re Calling Me Home, with Francesco Turrisi) have brought him many new fans in the last few years. No matter how far Tsumbu travels, however, his connection to Congo is ever-present, as this conversation by Zoom reveals. 

Niwel Tsumbu, Photo: Matthew Hurrell O’ConorWhat’s the story behind “Milimo”?

I started composing “Milimo” in Kinshasa on a Zande harp, which sounds like a cross between a thumb piano and a banjo. I bought it and went to visit my grandmother, and when I arrived, she was lying in bed, sick. I was playing the main riff of the song, and when she woke up, she was so happy. When I asked my grandmother why she had such a huge smile, she told me that when she was a kid, everybody played the harp, but when the guitar came to the Congo in the late ’30s and early ’40s, people stopped playing it overnight, so she hadn’t seen that instrument in many years. I always dedicate “Milimo” to my grandmother, and every time I play it, it connects me to her. She’s in a different world now, and the language I’m using on that piece is a very old, traditional language.

Did you grow up listening to many types of music?

My mentor told me that if I wanted to be good, I should open my mind and listen to all music. I could already play a lot of music from Congo, and back then, the only way to hear music that was not from Congo was through relatives. I would knock on people’s doors and ask them if they knew anyone who lived outside the country. That’s how I discovered a lot of music, including jazz, classical, and flamenco. I would put on the music, let the wall of sound hit me, and ask myself, “What is going on here?”

How did you develop your own style?

In Kinshasa, everyone I played with would let me write and arrange songs, so I’ve been lucky to exercise my ideas and my vocabulary. When I did, I would always do things differently. Even these great traditional Irish musicians encourage me to bring my own sound, and they never ask me to sound like someone else. It has allowed me to maintain my originality.

Don’t categories make it easier to market music?

I can accept the concept of genres in terms of business, and it might make it easier to find music. But if you’re a musician, to think that way is limiting yourself. The Congo River, the Mississippi, and the Pacific Ocean are all H2O. You can give them all these different names, but it’s just water. Fundamentally, all music is just sound.

How does one learn to confidently step onstage with great musicians in unfamiliar situations?

Listen without judgment. If you have a perception of what you think the music should be, you’ll create these ideas in your head—“let’s not use that chord, that’s not good.” But if you approach it with love, respect, and admiration, listening to what the other musicians are doing, you will get the feeling and the emotion, which is more important than the content.

Is it not important for you to nail tones or techniques used by the greats?

When people try to replicate things from the past, like specific tones or techniques, they’re boxing themselves in. Music should always change.

When you first started learning, was someone telling you what to practice?

I learned the importance of using one finger per fret, making sure to use my pinky, and keeping my movements efficient. I was also taught to keep my shoulders relaxed. The way you sit and stand affects your fingers. You want to be free all the time, never tense.

Niwel Tsumbu, Photo: Matthew Hurrell O’ConorWhat do you think about when you sit down to practice?

I don’t have things I always practice. If I don’t have to learn a particular song, I’m always trying to improve my mobility—it’s like going to the gym and making sure that I stay flexible.

Do you change up your practice routine often?

Yes. You practice something because you don’t know it, but once you learn it, you should move on and begin practicing new stuff. I’ll play something for 30 minutes, then I’ll have a break and do something else. I’ll be really in it, and then I’ll just come out of it—my brain will be like, “Boom. That’s it. Stop.” The goal is to always improve my coordination and my fingers’ efficiency.

How do you work on mobility?

I slow things down. It’s a very meticulous kind of work I do these days. They’re usually small movements that I’ll do for a while, and then I move on.

Did you have to work on your technique to use counterpoint the way you do?

I was used to playing two notes at the same time with the left hand, but I had to work hard to improve my right hand.

How so?

In classical guitar, you use the index and the middle finger to play the melody, and
the thumb, the index, and the middle finger to do arpeggios. But I had to learn to think of the hand as an organism.

Do you mean finger independence?

I actually think it’s impossible for the fingers to be independent because all the nerves are connected. Any movement you do with one finger will affect the other fingers. We forget sometimes that the whole body, not just the fingers, plays the guitar. The brachial plexus nerves are the ones moving the fingers, so your fingers are just executing, not moving on their own.

So, the goal is to be able to play anything with any finger.

If you’re walking down the street and somebody throws you a ball unexpectedly, you’re just going to react because you don’t want it to hit you. In the same way, you want to be able to react to the music and play whatever you want to express. Now, any finger on my right hand can play the melody; I can start a line from any finger. Whatever I feel, I play. That is the big change that had to happen in my right hand, and it took quite a bit of time.

How did you come up with this way of thinking about counterpoint?

I was playing Lego Star Wars with my son, and I noticed that each Lego has a different number of tiles—some have two, some have three tiles, four, five, or six tiles. You put them together to create a shape, and while we were playing, I realized that they were like intervals. I started thinking, “That two-tile Lego is like a second. That one’s a third, the other one is a fourth,” and so on. Then I thought, “What if I use the same system on guitar?” I realized that by going from small intervals to bigger intervals, I would get counterpoint naturally without thinking of playing ascending and descending melodies, which sounds hard. You just have to be able to switch between intervals, and I was already used to playing intervals. I picked up my guitar and played thirds and sixths, and I thought, “Wow, this is much easier than I was told.” I didn’t have to compose—I could just improvise using this system. I didn’t call it counterpoint. I called it the Lego way. [laughter]

Were you already thinking about counterpoint before you stumbled on this technique?

Well, I had been trying to come up with a way of making things interesting when I played duets with my friend Éamonn on percussion. I grew up hearing a lot of counterpoint in Congolese music—cool stuff that I wanted to develop, but I just didn’t know how. If you go way back, the Ndima Pygmies have been singing in counterpoint for thousands of years; they’re the kings of contrary motion. And then of course there’s Baroque music, which has been studied a lot.

You mentioned counterpoint in Congolese guitar, too, especially in bands with multiple guitarists.

I used to skip school to go to see bands rehearse, and all the guitarists would be going through, like, 20 lines before they found the right one. But unlike Baroque counterpoint, which people have written whole books about, counterpoint in Africa isn’t really studied. We don’t sit around trying to articulate what we’re doing. Nobody would come out and say that they were doing superimposed lines that go up and down. Nobody cares about that stuff, right? The main question is, is it making me dance? That’s it. When I give guitar lessons, I talk about it in a technical way so that people understand how much goes into African music. But in Africa, we don’t talk about it in those terms.

This way of thinking about counterpoint feels full of possibilities.

There are melodies in my songs that I didn’t know existed. I just played intervals, and those melodies came out! Some people say that everything has been done, but there’s so much that could be achieved with this system. It’s like a new world. I don’t think I will be able to do all of it in my lifetime.