Konono No. 1@ the Black Cat
Review and photos by DCist contributor Paul Ghosh-Roy
They don’t speak English. Their sound system consists of PA style loud speakers draped with mics. They play thumb pianos. The guy who formed the band was born in 1933. They also have a track produced by Timbaland on Bjork’s new album. Oh yeah, and they played the Black Cat on Friday night.
What to make of all this, you ask? Well, it’s Konono No. 1, son, so act like you know. Coming to us live and direct from Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, this seven piece ensemble brought their unique brand of fuzzed out Bazombo trance music to Washington, D.C. on Friday. Astute world music heads will note that that this is, in fact, the second time that Konono No. 1 has played the Black Cat, the other being a hot July night when the air conditioning was broken. Mercifully, this time the heat came only from the music.
A brief history of this phenomenon is as follows: in the 1960s Mawangu Mingiedi forms the band in Kinshasa, after moving to the city from the Zairian countryside; Kinshasa was too loud for the traditional, acoustic likembes (thumb pianos) to be heard over the urban din, so the band scares up a primitive sound system and electrifies the likembes with homemade(!) mics; sound system is so bad that sounds are all completely distorted and a new sound is born; in 1980 band is “discovered” by The White Man after Crammed Discs producer Vincent Kenis hears the band’s sole recording made by France Culture in 1978; in 2004 the band records Congotronics and Western media creates a huge buzz; band tours Europe; in 2005 “Congotronics 2” compilation CD is released, band tours Europe, America and Japan; in 2007 band records "Earth Intruders" with Bjork; April 29, 2007, Konono No.1 plays Coachella in Indio, California; May 4, 2007 DCist attends Konono No.1 show at the Black Cat in Washington, DC.
So does the band deserve all the buzz and hype? Yes, and the reason is that this band is authentic. They play music and don’t worry about their haircuts. The front man was wearing sweat pants, a t-shirt and a fanny pack for Christ’s sake. And it is the music we should focus on, as their distorted style created a unique and utterly new sound, unknown to the Congolese or anyone else. Yet at the same time, the music is completely familiar — familiar to Congolese and Angolans as, albeit fuzzy, Bazombo trance music, and familiar to Westerners for the typical reasons of our projections onto it. Western journalists have described the sound variously as like “avant garde,” “kraut rock” and “electronica.” Mawangu Mingiedi says, “I didn't know there was such a thing as electronic music.”
On Friday night the band consisted of its typical seven pieces: three likembe players, a drummer, a cowbell player, a conga player and the sole female member of the group, dressed in a colorful batik style dress, as singer and dancer. One of the likembe players did double duty as lead singer and front man, while the other two (including Mingiedi), the oldest and best dressed male members of the band, stood to the back of the stage almost motionlessly. The conga player plied his craft on two congas duct-taped together (apparently to prevent them from becoming casualties of his pounding), all the while blowing on a whistle like the leader of a batucada drum troupe. The cowbell player had four cowbells on a stand at his disposal, as Konono No. 1 believes in the old adage, “more cowbell.” The drum “kit” consisted of a snare, and a cymbal which may or may not have been homemade from scrap. Notably, the cymbal had about eight bolts in it, as an indication of the jerry rigged nature of the instruments. We know that if you crack a cymbal, the solution is often to punch a hole to prevent the crack from creeping up and destroying your fancy Zildjian, but we have never seen the holes screwed and bolted! Nor do we normally see an iron on stage beside the drummer. But then again, Konono No. 1 is unique.
As would be expected from a band whose music is derived from trance music, Konono No. 1’s songs were long, but maintained an uptempo and syncopated beat, a beat that provided a consistent, rhythmic backdrop for the rain of likembe plucking. And for a band with no perceptible (to the Western eye) bass instrument, the low end was almost miraculously omnipresent, produced primarily by a likembe. Where a rock band might use guitars and keyboards to create harmony, melody and bass, Konono No. 1 does this all with thumb pianos. But outside of the distorted plunking and twinkling of the likembes, rhythm is the real takeaway of the band’s sound — uptempo, syncopated and repetitive. From the congas to the singing, this is the hallmark of much African music, and Konono No.1 is no exception. Much of the singing is done in a call and response style, and when the singer repeated mono-syllabic words, the audience could make out enough to sing along, lighting up the singer’s face with a big smile.
Despite the length of the songs, and the minimal breaks the band took in between them, Konono No. 1 did not visibly appear to communicate much, if at all, while on stage. But in a band that has existed for years, the musicians probably communicate by ESP. Additionally, as the band did not speak English they could not, nor did they really try to, communicate with the audience. They did speak the language of commerce, however, as we were made to understand that the CD was available for sale in the back of the hall. At the only other attempt at band-audience communication, the cowbell player appeared to be asking us if we liked Konono No.1. The audience enthusiastically responded yes, just as they cheered wildly at every other brief interruption in the music. The fact is, however, that the music did all the talking necessary, and it spoke volumes.