Congotronics isn’t a band or a genre. And it’s not another world-music remix experiment. Instead, it’s a smart marketing term for an ambitious set of field recordings Belgian producer Vincent Kenis has made over the past six years in Kinshasa. Kenis describes these groups as “tradi-modern”: it’s unplugged music turned on its head as village ensembles come to the big city and go electric. These musicians sing, play drums, xylophones, guitars, and thumb pianos (likembes), generally intensified through huge, crusty, sometimes homemade amplifiers. It’s rough-edged and woolly, with a wild energy and commercial potential: the first Congotronics focused on just one group, Konono No. 1, and sold more than 35,000 units. Its follow-up, Congotronics 2, Buzz ’n’ Rumble from the Urb’n Jungle (Crammed Discs), is a meaty CD/DVD package that features six groups and enough sonic variety and trancey, rhythmic pump to keep this unlikely phenomenon aloft.
So much Afropop has been tamed by glossy production that the grittiness of the Congotronics aesthetic is a welcome reflection of Africa’s urban realities. Kenis processes, equalizes, and mixes the tracks, but only subtly. Major reworkings are left to DJs who meld Congotronics into their club mixes — the DJs who insured that the audience for Konono No. 1’s tour last fall was mostly under 25, a rarity for world music.
Kenis first heard electric likembes during a trip to Kinshasa in 1971. That was the height of then-President Mobutu’s “authenticity” campaign, a heyday for traditional musicians in the country. As Kenis has said, “Mobutu used to give plenty of money to musicians because he wanted music to be a vector of his propaganda, his pan-Africanist, nationalist discourse.” Mobutu restricted the broadcast and sale of foreign music, but his dictatorial manipulations had an upside for all varieties of Congolese culture.
Kenis’s quest to record “tradi-modern” groups began in the late ’80s. By then, Mobutu had stopped supporting musicians and most had gone underground. Many of them made their livings playing funerals. In essence, evangelists with PA systems cornered the funeral market. The leader of Konono became a taxi driver. Other groups disbanded or vanished into the Congolese interior. It took Kenis until 2000 to locate Konono and start recording. He found that the diamond-rich Kasai region still had some musical representatives in Kinshasa, and he organized a tour of Kasai — a tour that reinvigorated a number of groups heard on Congotronics 2, including Basokin, with their eerily buzzing drums and hypnotically cycling electric guitars; Bolia We Ndengo, who feature accordion, and the fabulous Kasai Allstars, actually a combination of two previously competing groups.
The CD concludes with a long, live track from Konono No. 1 playing for a big crowd in Brussels. The track reaches psychedelic heights that surpass the Kinshasa recordings on the first Congotronics volume. Back in Africa, commercial pop bands like Zaiko Langa Langa have become a major influence. Kenis’s new hope is that young Congolese hip-hop acts inspired by the international success of Congotronics will begin to create new urban hybrids. He clearly has his ear to the ground, and has plans for additional Congotronics volumes. More village grunge for ears battered by too much technology.
On the Web
Congotronics: //www.congotronics.com/
Konono No. 1: //www.crammed.be/konono/
