Abstract
This essay looks at the lyrical and performative conventions of popular music from Kinshasa, capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, concentrating particularly on how these conventions interact with ideas of emotion and exchange in the region. Setting the romantic texts of popular songs in the context of wider patronage relationships, the essay argues that love and money are not perceived as contradictory forces. At the same it is argued that the romantic lyrics of popular songs also contain a strong sense of the individual, and of a reflexive self-awareness which is often asserted to be absent in African cultural products. It is argued that Kinois popular music, viewed in its social context, does not merely reflect, but actively reproduces a set of affective and political economic relationships.1
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