Kasai Allstars, feat. Muambuyi, "Kabuangoyi"

Konono No1’s recent Congotronics (Crammed Discs, 2004) release was a phenomenon.  After all, when was the last time a 30-year old band, without so much as a release in their home country, became a world music hit, winner of a BBC 2006 Planet Award, and a sensation on the youthful, DJ club circuit to boot?  That last bit is important.  This Kinshasa neighborhood band, playing trance grooves on ancient thumb pianos (likembes) fed through enormous amplifiers cranked to distortion levels seem to have tapped into something that works with a younger audience, a sound that is raw, unpretentious, and real.  But lest anyone doubt that this is a full-out “phenomenon,” we now have Congotronics 2, a CD/DVD package showcasing six of Kinshasa’s urban traditional bands.  In every way, this volume surpasses the first one, ensuring that the Congotronics wave will continue to mount. 

Masanka Sankayi and Kasai Allstars kick off with deep, dry bass, and the merged buzzing of voices fed through cheap PA speakers and drums with built-in fuzz effects.  Over that, a clear melody played on a wooden xylophone punches through sharply, as animated call-and-response vocals hover in a wonderfully obscure zone that even the cleverest remixer would be hard pressed to duplicate.  There are many such moments, rich, mysterious audio effects created through a combination of exotic instruments and vocal techniques, improvised sound reinforcement, and unusual recording environments, such as the abandoned shopping mall in which the likembe group Kisanzi Congo were recorded. 

The Congotronics series was a long time in the making.  Belgian producer Vincent Kenis first heard these groups in 1971 on his first trip to the Congo.  At the time, village groups were being lured to the city by money and fame associated with Mobutu Sese Seko’s “authenticity” agenda.  Those opportunities, and indeed Mobutu himself, were gone by the time Kenis returned to record these groups.  It took him years just to find them.  One of the groups here, Kasai Allstars, was actually assembled using members of Luba and Lulua groups for a tour.  To Kenis’s surprise, the new, multiethnic group remained intact to be recorded a year later in three marvelous tracks on this CD. 

There is a rich variety of sonorities and grooves here.  Some groups use guitars, at times blending with likembes and xylophones to psychedelic effect.  Sometimes we get the familiar Latin rhythms of mainstream Congo pop.  (Only in reference to these urban-trad groups would one even contemplate such a category!).  That makes for some sweet moments, such as the Kasai Allstars “Kabuangoyi,” a track that also features some of the strongest singing on either Congotronics CD.  The Songye group Basokin also stands out, with its deep 6/8 bush groove, and fuzz-box hand drums.  A barn-burning track of Konono No1 live before an ecstatic crowd in Belgium concludes the CD in grand form.  The DVD is more than a nice extra, offering visuals that both demystify the sounds, and at the same time deepen ones curiosity about these unlikely urbanites. 

Congotronics generates unease among some Congo pop aficionados who perceive it as reinforcing Western primitivist notions about Africa.  This is a gnarly debate, which I’ll acknowledge but not enjoin here.  In Congotronics defense, though, the music on this release is both unique and compelling.  These recordings deliver a visceral jolt of Kinshasa reality, with all its bizarre contradictions.  Village musicians coming to the city and finding a way to make music is, after all, the quintessential Afropop story.  No recent Afropop release portrays it more vividly.