KONONO NO.1 – MOMO, 5TH APRIL 2006
April 6th, 2006 by rui
The Congolese band Konono No.1 plays downstairs at a north African restaurant for its first ever UK gig. It has all the makings of the Sex Pistols’ 100 Club appearance back in 1976, where just short of a million people still claim to have been at a venue holding just short of 300 at its absolute capacity. Given the intensity and infectiousness of their performance, it wouldn’t take a quantum leap of the imagination to see Konono No.1 being spoken of in the same revered tones as the punk pioneers.
It was chaotic from the outset. A small crowd of uncertains milled around outside one of London’s finest Moroccan food outlets looking anxious. Nobody knew the deal, but all seemed desperately keen to witness the impending spectacle. The band has already released a critically acclaimed album – Congotronics #1 – last year and has recently picked up a World Music award from the BBC.
Two hours pass in the prohibitively expensive Souk-like carpet lounge that is Momo’s basement club before the 10-strong Konono No.1 take the floor. A row of mechanics’ lights are hung from the ceiling, in keeping with the make-do-and-mend theme of the evening. Konono No.1’s instruments are cobbled together from old car parts and bits of wood and wire. The band leader, perma-smiling, 73-year old Mawangu Mingiedi, wanted to amplify his likembe – a kind of thumb piano comprising a wooden board to which staggered metal keys are attached – so more people could hear it in the loud, bustling clubs of Kinshasa. He was a resourceful car mechanic with a radio, so all things were possible, he says. So he used the magnets from a car alternator and wound copper wire around them to fashion makeshift pick-ups. The resulting instruments create an innocently joyous sound so compelling you want to bottle it up and either drink it or take it home with you.
At the first note, the whole audience quite literally stands up and takes notice. Attention to anything else but the band becomes meaningless. There is no let up. The first number clocks in at a dizzying 25 minutes, whereupon the audience is given a chance to show its appreciation. But not for long, because we’re straight back into the melée after a second or two. This band is clearly not prepared to pussy-foot around with the oft-decreed all-powerful three-minute pop song and it launches straight into another hypnotic, pounding, unrelenting twenty minute masterpiece.
Bodies sway and lilt and anything else they can do in this mayhem. Every so often, little refrains carry hints of techno or pub garage punk. But with glockenspiels or xylophones. Except there aren’t any. But as is not always the case with punk or techno, this leaves everyone spellbound and smiling. The percussion drags you in, the singers’ voices delight, the higher-pitched likembes dance out the beguiling melodies, but when the bass likembe strikes up, it gives your ears a proper kicking. And you can’t help but move.
Mingiedi says he started out playing all manner of instruments, including car seats, hammers, spark plugs, anything that came to hand in his garage. For him, the music he plays comes naturally – there are no influences beyond his musical parents and the orchestras he heard while growing up. In terms of instruments, things haven’t moved on too much since the outset – the DIY nature still holds sway. But there’s nothing made up or manufactured about the reaction the music gets here. Konono No.1 is probably the greatest techno rock punk avant garde funk ska crossover band you’re ever likely to hear.
Ketsbaia
