27 f Overcoming All The Odds
As anybody who has seen the recent documentary film about their extraordinary story will know, Staff Benda Bilili’s international success has been more than deserved. Story: Jon Lusk. Photos: Judith Burrows.
s ‘real-life fairy tales’ go, the story of Staff Benda Bilili’s journey from destitution on the dirt-track streets of Kin- shasa to international stardom takes some beating. This, combined with their obvious grit and strong visual appeal – the cocky poses in outlandish, cus- tomised three wheelers, their seemingly gleeful onstage defiance of disability – has always made for good copy. But it’s their music that really makes them unique.
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There are fond nods to the ‘old school’ rumba of Franco’s TPOK Jazz and Tabu Ley’s Afrisa, as well as the wilder, later vibe of Zaiko Langa Langa/Choc Stars etc, vin- tage Cuban sounds, roots reggae and James Brown-style funk. They have distinc- tive, homemade acoustic guitars and inge- niously improvised percussion instruments, topped by the theremin wail of Roger Landu’s one-stringed satonge. Plus four- to five-part harmony vocals. To those bored stupid by the excesses of soukous, ndom- bolo and more recent variations on rumba malaise, it was manna from heaven.
In the two years since their debut Très
Très Fort on the Belgian label Crammed, they’ve been heaped with critical praise, won the fRoots Critics Poll Album Of The Year 2009, scooped a Womex award and toured Europe. They even became movie stars in March this year, when the long- gestating documentary Benda Bilili! was released – after a premiere at Cannes Film Festival, s’il vous plaît.
The film details their early struggles, beginning in July 2005, when two inexpe- rienced but passionate French film mak- ers, Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tul- laye, explain how “their music went straight to our hearts”, after meeting them on the streets in Kinshasa while film- ing Jupiter Bokondji and his Okwess Inter- national for a documentary called Jupiter’s Dance (2007).
They follow the band’s fortunes, focusing in particular on the young street kid (shégué) Roger as he becomes a mem- ber and grows in stature – both musically and physically. We see their first unsuccess- ful attempts at recording, and how the band actually break up after the shelter some of them are living in burns down. Roger returns to his village, grows up a bit and then… things turn around again after he rejoins the reformed band and they begin recording in the shady, humid grounds of Kinshasa Zoo. By 2009, they’re making their first tour of Europe.
Fans in the UK had to wait until November that year before Staff Benda Bilili made their startling debut at Lon- don’s Barbican Centre. From four wheelchairs parked at the front of the stage, the three guitarist/singers Coco, Ricky and Theo and singer/dancer Djunana are the focus of the show. Stage left, ani- mateur Kabamba Kabose dangles puppet- like from a pair of crutches, his polio-shriv- elled right leg swinging unnervingly as he flings himself about with little apparent regard for his frail frame. At the back are the able-bodied, younger guys – tall bass player Paulin ‘Cavalier’ Kiara-Maigi, drum- mer Montana Kinunu sitting behind a peculiar bespoke kit, and Roger, who per- forms one squealing satonge solo on his knees à la Jimi Hendrix. And there are gasps of amazement when Djunana boldly hoists himself down onto the stage, begins to dance on the stumps of his legs and then performs a forwards somersault in the middle of Avramandole.
In May 2011, a rather road-weary Staff Benda Bilili are back in London, this time to play The Roundhouse. Just beforehand, I meet Theo and Montana backstage with the group’s manager Michel Winter, who translates when the French that I learnt during three months of 1987 in the coun- try then called Zaire becomes inadequate; most of the time.
At 49, Theo is one of the more senior members, and the singer and composer of Sala Mosala, a swinging reggae-flavoured highlight of Très Très Fort. He hides behind a pair of dark sunglasses for most of the interview. Although reggae has never been big in Congo, Theo was always a fan. “Before I joined this orchestra, when I was young, 16-years-old, I loved Bob Marley very much and I was playing his music. People called me ‘Bob the Rasta’ because I had lots of hair!” he recalls.
According to a potted biography on the Crammed website, Theo’s… “family lost everything with the fall of the Mobutu regime; he then had to hit the streets and became an electrician.” However, when I mention this to Theo, things get off to a bad start. Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t want to be associated with Mobutu’s klepto - cratic regime. It’s a little harder to fathom why he also denies being an ‘electrician’.
“My family had nothing to do with
Mobutu. It’s just, years ago I had a little shop doing some traffic between Brazza - ville and Kinshasa and then I couldn’t con- tinue with it, it was finished… and when
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