Konono N°1 and the album of the century

A proper studio recording

Paris 

09/06/2010 - 

They are masters of recuperation and, in their own way, were pioneers of sustainable development back in the 1960s.  The Congolese group Konono N°1 have gone back to the studio to record what they refer to as “the album of the century”. They have called it Assume Crash Position (meaning roll into a ball and get ready for a shock in Kongo language) and it is at last available. In Paris, we met with two of the musicians who have charmed Björk, Herbie Hancock and Radiohead’s lead singer, Thom Yorke.

Founded back in 1966 by Mingiedi Mawangu, Konono N°1 is an original electric likembe ensemble. The instruments (likembes and percussion) are cobbled together using salvaged junk, amplified using microphones made from car alternator magnets wired up to a makeshift sound system, and then transmitted through patched-up megaphones renamed voice throwers.

The inevitably oversaturated result is rich in overtones, with an incessant, heady sound that borders on the brutal. When they perform live, the group, whose name is an invitation to seek shelter, leaves you completely wrung out. Mingiedi Mawangu, the group’s 80-year-old founder, and his young friends including his son Augustin, are capable of just using their thumbs to produce sounds that rival the best techno productions in the energy their compositions give out.

The group that sings konono

Konono N°1 were discovered in 1978 on a compilation on the label Ocora entitled Musiques Urbaines à Kinshasa. They were back in the music press at start of the Millennium when they released Lubuaku on the Dutch label Terp, and then appeared in the Congotronics collection on the Belgian label, Crammed Discs. It was then that producer Vincent Kenis took an interest in these musicians hailing from the capital’s suburbs on the south bank of the Congo, and helped them build up a reputation beyond their own borders.

They are regularly on the road, coming up against all the usual visa difficulties, and it was between two concerts in Belgium and just before a tour of the UK, Netherlands and France, that Augustin and Aaaron bombed down to Paris on the Thalys train to talk to us about their “album of the century”. Which was in any case what they were calling it between themselves before it was recorded.

“We decided to record this album,” Augustin emphasises, as if he wants to underline the difference with their previous albums, which were completely live recordings. It has to be said that Konono N°1’s story has often been written on the spur of the moment.

Their name, for example, was “invented” by their fans. Initially, konono was just one word from the chorus of their first hit. Their fans started to refer to them as “the group that sings konono,” recounts Aaron. “Very quickly, everyone was saying Konono in the streets of Kinshasa. The No. 1 came later with the proliferation of likembe groups in Kin’.”

They needed to stand out from the others and remind everyone that they had been at the start of the movement now known as modern-trad.

Bazombo trance

“Through music, we communicate with the spirit of our ancestors,” explains Augustin. “They are definitely delighted that the rhythms we play are so popular around the world. We are a kind of rhythm library for our region. Anyone who wants to dig into the roots of Congolese music has to come and see us,” he affirms in a knowing, jovial kind of way.

The roots he mentions are Bazombo trance. This ethnic group lives on either side of the Angola/Congo border. The trance has seduced Björk, the petulant Icelandic singer who invited them to play on Earth Intruders, one of the tracks on her album Volta (2007), and more recently the avant-garde pianist Herbie Hancock, who chose them for one of the tracks on The Imagine Project, his next opus due out before the summer.

Their musical collaborations, and the discoveries gleaned from all the festivals they have played in, have probably done something to change the way they relate to sound and musical construction. These eight tracks stand apart from their previous productions.

More accessible, they could almost be called songs if their rhythms weren’t so frenetic. It isn’t until Mingiedi’s solo performance at the end of the album (Nakobana Lisusu Te) that the tempo slows down and the father of twenty practically whispers into our ear that he “doesn’t want to get married any more because today’s women think that marriage lasts six months.”

He called it “The album of the century” before going into the studio. Album of the century it is, and not only for its title, which invites us to protect ourselves in these times of crisis. But there’s no need to tell them too often, it might just stop them recording another one.

  Konono n°1 on MySpace

Konono N°1 Assume Crash Position (Crammed disc) 2010

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Translation : Anne-Marie  Harper