Fans of wild electric guitar and Congolese-style rumba chords: under no circumstances should you miss out on this prodigious guitarist with fingers as quick as lightning! The amazing phenomenon that is Diblo Dibala possesses such agility on the six strings that he has been dubbed ‘Machine Gun’. A long-standing icon of Central Africa and the soukous repertoire, he’s visiting us to electrify festival-goers and leave us dizzy.

Following in the footsteps of the world’s guitar greats, Dibala fell in love with the instrument as a teenager. A self-taught virtuoso by the age of 15, he was in high demand among several established bands in Kinshasa. His natural talent wasn’t confined to the DRC for long, and he spread his wings to Brussels and then Paris in the 1980s. Diblo creates this unique, frenzied sound of strings racing out of control, as if an external force were plucking them into a wild, sustained melody that keeps you moving from the very first seconds right through to the final silence. A true musical workout that marks life’s gatherings, from christenings to weddings.

Now in his 70s, Diblo impresses with his rhythmic vitality, which forms the percussive backbone of every composition. He is the conductor, the bandleader, the treble clef all rolled into one. A soukous superstar who pays tribute to the spectrum of feelings and sensations, with dizzyingly delightful tracks such as “Amour et souvenir”, “Laissez-passer” and, in 2021, “Etoula”, in collaboration with the legends Loketo, global ambassadors of the soukous genre.

It will be hot and steamy when Dibala’s bursts of energy shake the crowd at the Quartier des Spectacles… A special invitation to let yourself go to riffs that trigger ecstasy and make you sway from hips to ankles. The only rule to follow: a desire to dive headfirst into the spiral of Congolese rumba without a life jacket, and without inhibition.