Such brushes with the law only served to heighten the kudos that surrounded the man and his music.Ī dominant motif in his repertoire was the often uneasy relationship between the sexes, a friction that he deplored and worked hard to alleviate. Although Franco worked within and through the praise song tradition, he was not above preaching at times, for which he occasionally found himself in jail. A fruit of the government's drive to promote authentic Congolese culture, Franco's was categorically a music performed to be danced to. Franco's sound was an easy blend of Cuban rumba and Congolese rhythm. In 1956, Franco helped form OK Jazz (later TPOK Jazz), a band that was to define Congolese music for decades. Part of Franco's appeal lay in his winning looks and common man accessibility, but as much as this, he was known for his inventive guitar style. In recent years parliament has compensated former political prisoners and anti-Franco guerrilla fighters.When Congolese jazz guitarist Franco Makiadi died in 1989, the whole of Zaire (formerly the Belgian Congo) went into mourning it was a fitting farewell for a musician who, over the course of 40 years, issued over 150 albums, containing more than 1000 songs, and who had a decisive influence on the shape of African music.įranco began his musical ventures with a homemade guitar, recorded his first single, "Bolingo Na Ngai Beatrice," at the age of 13, and by the age of 15 was a regularly contracted recording artist with the Loningisa Studio's house band. The conservative People's party of the current prime minister, José Maria Aznar, voted yesterday against an amendment that would have automatically given financial compensation to former gay prisoners, but agreed a committee should study the matter. But the law should still prevent them proselytising in schools, sports clubs and army barracks," one psychologist, Lopez Ibor, wrote in 1968. "Homosexuals should be seen more as sick people than as criminals. "Any effeminate or introvert who insults the movement will be killed like a dog," General Queipo del Llano, Franco's favourite broadcaster, once threatened.Īmong the most prominent homosexuals killed by the regime was the leftwing poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, whose writings were considered dangerously subversive.Īt the end of Franco's regime, homosexuality was increasingly viewed as an illness rather than a crime. The Franco regime and its Falangist supporters considered homosexuals a threat to their ideal of a "macho" Spanish male. "What we want is a declaration of moral rehabilitation for those people who had part of their lives stolen by the state," he said. Pedro Zerolo, president of Spain's Federation of Gays and Lesbians, welcomed parliament's decision but hoped more would be done. They could still be jailed until 1979 by the courts under the law on so-called "social dangers and rehabilitation". When thousands of political and other prisoners were pardoned the following year, homosexuals were left to serve out their sentences. The persecution did not end with Franco's death. "It is not uncommon to hear homosexuals from the upper classes and the aristocracy speak about the Franco period as a great time." Those who suffered were mainly from the lower classes, Mr Fuentes said. "A lot of them do not want to recall what happened," said a historian, Pablo Fuentes. At least 1,000 gays were jailed during the last decade of Franco's rule. The exact numbers of those affected by the measures agreed yesterday are hard to determine. "It is not a question of money, but of moral restitution for someone who was brutally persecuted and had his life ruined," he said. It took until last year for him to get his record formally destroyed. "Watch out, that one's queer," one of the police officers said. I was raped there and in the police cells and psychologically tortured by both the guards and the prison doctor."įive years ago, when stopped by police officers who checked his identity over the radio, he discovered that his homosexuality was still registered on a police file. "The nun went straight to the police and I was arrested and sent for trial," he recalled yesterday. One of those demanding compensation is Antonio Ruiz, from the eastern city of Valencia, who was sent to prison at 17 in the dying days of the Franco regime after he told his mother that he was gay and she asked a nun for advice. Yesterday's decision means that sentences for homosexuality will be taken off police files and the parliament will seek a way to redress the damage done. Homosexuals, almost all of them men, were packed off to mental hospitals where some were given electric shock. Prison terms of up to three years were imposed under laws covering "public scandal" or "social danger".
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