Konono No. 1
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Take, for example, the superb music released under the Buena Vista Social Club banner. By and large, it’s not what most Cubans listen to–homegrown hip-hop and timba, a slick dance music, are the preferred forms of pop on the island. Two great African acts that have performed here, the Senegalese group Orchestra Baobab and the Congolese rumba group Kekele, are considered old-fashioned back home; kids in Africa are more interested in the locally produced hip-hop that’s exploded there and the more polished Congolese rumba produced by singer Koffi Olomide. It’s virtually impossible to find music on African labels in the U.S. outside of small African video stores and groceries.
Non-Western music that both immediately appeals to Western ears and accurately reflects what overseas listeners are passionate about is hard to come by. You get both in the Congolese band Konono No. 1. The members of the group have played off and on together in the impoverished suburbs of Kinshasa since the late 70s, and while they’re not superstars there, they command a fervent and loyal following. Their roots are in matanga, a kind of funeral music played by the Zombo, a tribe living along the Western-drawn border of Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Matanga is as “authentic” as anything an ethnomusicologist could hope for, but the group–whose full name is Orchestre Tout Puissant Likembe Konono No. 1–long ago tweaked the sound with jerry-rigged amplification to produce something rhythmically mesmerizing and entirely its own.
The relentless beats behind the likembes are played on a mix of African hand percussion and makeshift drums, including a hi-hat composed of a broken cymbal and an old hubcap. The chanted call-and-response vocals are also distorted; the group uses a homemade wooden microphone that incorporates magnets taken from old car parts. The music is then blasted through old conical speakers that the group calls “lance-voix”–voice throwers. Instruments drop in and out of the songs, but the deep, killer grooves churn on. It’s party music with the rise-and-fall of club tracks and the DIY appeal of punk rock.
