[1][2] His parents were both musicians; his father, Aubin Boukaka, was with the musical ensemble “La Gaieté,” while his mother, Yvonne Ntsatouabaka, was a singer and hostess of funeral vigils and popular celebrations.
This progression of bands started in 1955, when at age 14 or 15 he joined the group Sexy Jazz, founded by Miguel Samba, Siscala Mouanga, and Aubert Nganga.
[2][3] In November 1958, with a number of other musicians mostly from Brazzaville, including his friend Michel Boyibanda who had been in Sympathic Jazz with him, Boukaka founded Negro Band.
[3][5] In either event, Boukaka was certainly working in Leopoldville in 1960, when he joined musicians from African Jazz, including Tabu Ley Rochereau, to perform as "Jazz African" while the band's leader Joseph Kabasele (Le Grand Kallé) was in Brussels for the Round Table Conference on the Belgian Congo's independence.
[4]: 163 [6] Subsequently, still in Leopoldville, with Jeannot Bombenga and Casino Mutshipule from African Jazz, he founded the band Vox Africa; other members of its first lineup included Papa Noël and Djeskain Massengo.
[3] At the same time, Boukaka expanded his songwriting topics beyond "love and nature" to include social issues and politics, or "to analyze and criticize the human soul.
[2][8] He organized an ensemble of sanza (thumb piano) players as part of a Congolese folklore troupe that traveled to Paris under French governmental auspices.
The twelve-song album from these sessions, packaged after his death as Franklin Boukaka à Paris, has been called "a work of such power and beauty that it cannot go unremarked.
"[4]: 165–66 Remarkable tracks on the à Paris album include different, stripped-down arrangements of "Pont sur la Congo" and "Les Immortels," as well as a new rumba called "Likambo Oyo" (this problem).
[2] Boukaka also performed internationally in Spain, Germany, the USSR, China, Yugoslavia, Mongolia, and North Korea, according to Guy Menga and Clement Ossinonde.
Congolese-music historian Gary Stewart reports that "many Congolese suspect he was executed - all the more so because his name had originally turned up on a list of those who had been arrested.
[2][3][10][18][21] Boukaka has been lauded for his "exceptional musical talent," and specifically "his appealing stage presence, mellow baritone, and increasingly incisive compositions.
"[4]: 164 Boukaka was a key early figure in the development of Congolese popular music, a pioneer of the rumba and soukous that dominated Africa from the 1970s to the 1990s.
He was also, metaphorically, a "Pont sur le Congo", working in each of the two politically opposed countries whose capital cities were across that river from each other, and a major participant, in both directions, in the cultural cross-pollenization of that time between Brazzaville and Kinshasa.
Recent newspaper columns, blog posts and other essays from, for example, India, the Netherlands, the United States, and Kenya recall his life and highlight his music, particularly the "timeless" song "Le Bucheron.
[3] That this list includes artists from Southern, East, West, and Central Africa, and both Anglophone and Francophone countries, indicates that musicians have heeded Boukaka's Pan-African message, even if politicians have not.