Before the catch-all marketing category “world music” was adopted by record companies in the late 1980s, there was a burgeoning African music scene in Britain. West African highlife, Afrobeat and jùjú had their followers but the most popular genre was Congolese rumba, imported from Paris. There was a lack of UK-based bandleaders and few had even visited Britain; then one day in 1983, the Congo-Zairean guitarist Mose Se Sengo, aka Mose Fan Fan, strolled into Sterns African Music shop in central London and British ears were opened to a musical wonderland.

Fan Fan, who has died aged 74, came from a heritage of big dance bands, sweet melodies and electric guitar stylists, a Congolese sound that entranced the African continent. From the 1950s, Afro-Latin rhythms had been blended with maringa, a local version of palm wine guitar music, and agwaya, an early type of Congo rock’n’roll, leading to two distinct musical styles pioneered by two rival groups in Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) – the “international” African Jazz and the more punchy OK Jazz, led by the celebrated guitarist Franco Luambo. Fan Fan became a leading member of OK Jazz and then formed his own band, Somo Somo; he later moved to Tanzania and then Kenya, eventually settling in the UK, where he continued to record and perform.

He was born Ferdinand Mose, the fifth of nine children, in Leopoldville, in what was then the Belgian Congo, to Diamuini Dianpetelo Emanuel, a chef, and his wife, Madelene. He was later renamed Mose Se Sengo when obliged to adopt an African name after Mobutu Sese Seko seized power in 1965. His nickname came from the swashbuckling French film character Fanfan la Tulipe.

He started playing guitar while at boarding school and, back in Leopoldville, made his debut with Rickem Jazz as a teenager, and then joined the Jazz Barons and Orchestre Revolution. In 1967 Fan Fan was recruited into OK Jazz as second lead guitarist. He had a finger-picking style to match the hard, metallic attack of Franco, and his role was to deputise when the leader was offstage chatting or doing business.

This allowed Fan Fan to attract his own following, with his unrelenting drive and intricate arrangements. Franco acknowledged his importance in 1972 in the praise song Testament, coupled on disc with Fan Fan’s own composition Djemelasi, which became a big hit.

Inspired by the success of Djemelasi, Fan Fan broke away to form his own group, Somo Somo, which translates roughly as “Double Trouble”. In 1974, against the advice of friends and colleagues, he left Congo (by now renamed Zaire) and travelled via Zambia to Tanzania, where the most popular bands featured Zairean musicians.

He became the bandleader of Orchestra Makassy, then Orchestre Maquis, before founding Orchestre Matimila, in which he was eventually joined by Remmy Ongala. Moving to Kenya in the early 1980s in search of a record deal, Fan Fan recorded a series of tracks reflecting his response to changing cultures.

A collaboration in Nairobi with the British pop singer Robin Scott included several numbers with vocals by the South African female trio Shikisha. In 1983 Fan Fan travelled to London, where he was eventually to settle. There he reunited with the Shikisha singer Doreen Webster and launched a UK version of Somo Somo.

The British musicians had difficulty fitting into the African “system”, which requires instrumentalists to play the melody within the rhythm rather than on top of it. Nevertheless, the saxophonist Stuart Boardman remembered Fan Fan as “a genius with rhythm” who did “astounding things with rhythm, turns it on its head, slows it down and speeds it back up again – and it swings like the clappers”.

Sterns Records released Somo Somo’s first – self-titled – UK album in 1985, and the band blazed a trail on the British circuit of small clubs and festivals. Fan Fan visited France in 1986, linking up with francophone session players to record the album Paris, which sounded more authentically Zairean.

After the death of Franco in 1989 Fan Fan reunited with old OK Jazz colleagues to form an informal group, Bana OK, eventually releasing the album Bakitani in 1993. That year the former OK Jazz singer Sam Mangwana toured England with Les Quatres Etoiles (Four Stars) and he invited his old friend to play with them. They later recorded the CD Hello Hello (1995). A compilation of old favourites, Belle Epoque, was released in 1994.

Fan Fan also renewed his connection with Tanzania in 1995 when he played with Shikamoo Jazz, a band of veterans who made a short tour of Britain. His style was beginning to mellow and in 1999 he recorded the melodic and relaxed album Congo Acoustic, followed by a couple of self-produced CDs.

In 2015 his guitar accompanist Fiston Lusambo was working in Kenya and heard the song Papa Lolo. He recognised it as Fan Fan’s lament for his lost nephew Lolo, a track on his 2004 album Bayekeleye. The song had become popular in Kenya and led to a return visit to the country for Fan Fan and another tour in 2018; his visit to Nairobi this spring was to have included a recording session with several local artists, but he collapsed and died two days before the recording date.

Fan Fan was married four times, first to Caroline, with whom he had two sons, Emanuel and Augustine, and a daughter, Madelene. Following her death he married Djemelasi, with whom he had a daughter, Djemelasi Bambino; the marriage ended in divorce; he then married Jamila, and had a daughter, Vedina, and son, Mose; after their divorce he married Angelique. She survives him along with his children, his brothers Emmanuel and Daniel, and sister Marie.

• Mose Se Sengo (Mose Fan Fan), guitarist and bandleader, born 16 October 1944; died 3 May 2019