Playlist at the end of article.
If there's a single adjective that fits Afrobeat band Konono Nº.1, it's "hypnotic". Hearing Congotronics, their breakout 2005 album, is like peering through a portal into another universe. Western listeners will probably not understand any of the lyrics, as the songs are performed in Kikongo, a Congolese language with only seven million native speakers, most of them living in DR Congo itself. But the clattering rhythms, the overdriven thumb pianos, and the ritualistic chants are nonetheless a beautiful soundscape.
Konono Nº.1 started in 1966 in the Congolese capital Kinshasa, originally put together by Mawangu Mingiedi, a truck driver. Among the Bazombo people in Mingiedi’s rural home region near the Congo-Angola border, tribal music was played on horns made from elephant tusks. Without easy access to these instruments in Kinshasa, Mingiedi started transposing his people's traditional melodies to the thumb piano, and recruited a mixture of vocalists and a tireless percussion section.
Early on, Konono Nº.1 developed a remarkable DIY approach to performance and amplification. The band members scavenged discarded car parts and junk to create a homemade sound system. For example, they carved wooden microphone capsules and fitted these with magnets taken from automobile alternators. These were then plugged into makeshift amplifiers and enormous loudspeakers called lance-voix ("voice-throwers")—relics of Belgian colonial-era public address systems, which the band took apart and repurposed for their music.
The band members scavenged discarded car parts and junk to create a homemade sound system.
Because they were playing in the noisy streets of Kinshasa, the amplification had to be loud—and cranking this ad hoc amplification up to eleven introduced the satisfying chug of analog distortion and buzzing overtones, transforming the thumb piano into something almost like the texture of distorted rock guitars.
For decades, Konono Nº.1 remained a fixture of Kinshasa’s urban musical underworld, typically playing at weddings, street parties, and community gatherings. But their work was virtually unknown outside of the region. That changed in the early 2000s, when Belgian producer Vincent Kenis, intrigued by a grainy 1978 field recording, tracked down the group to sign to the record label Crammed Discs. What followed was a remarkable breakthrough: after nearly 40 years of toiling away in obscurity—and with their founder Mawangu Mingiedi now in his seventies—Konono Nº.1 released Congotronics in 2005, earning acclaim not solely from world music circles, but also from electronic, indie, and experimental music fans across Europe and the U.S.
After nearly 40 years of toiling away in obscurity, Konono Nº.1 released Congotronics in 2005, earning acclaim not solely from world music circles, but also from electronic, indie, and experimental music fans across Europe and the U.S.
