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he band’s plans for setting up a new centre for handicapped people in Kinshasa are well under way, and they say con- struction will soon start. They
hope to include a place to protect shégués, whose alliance with handicapped homeless people is based on being able to help carry and push them around when needed.
With Staff Benda Bilili’s growing inter- national success, I wonder whether they see their role as musicians changing. As founder member Ricky says in the film: “I don’t make things up, we sing about what happens.” That’s obviously confirmed by the lyrics of Polio: “I was born as a strong man but polio crippled me/Look at me today, I’m screwed onto my tricycle… Par- ents, please go to the vaccination centre.”
But how easy is that in Kinshasa if you have no money? “It’s not difficult,” says Theo. “It’s free now. In my time we didn’t have that, but now it’s everywhere easy to get one for free.”
Despite the fact that the group now have a bigger audience abroad than at home, he thinks they will continue to spread important messages in their songs, such as encouraging more enlightened attitudes to disability: “Nothing has changed in that respect. We will continue to have that role of being educators.”
The band are planning to record their next album in November, and Montana promises there will be a balance between continuity and change: “The new material is a bit different – it will always be Staff Benda Bilili, but with the experience that we have now from two years touring and listening to other music.”
We adjourn to the smoking area out- side, joining Ricky, Coco and Djunana. I had asked during the interview if Staff Benda Bili were initially viewed as some- thing of a ‘freak show’ but Michel had not translated this question, retorting protec- tively: “Maybe it’s probably true, but I don’t think they feel it like that – they con- sider themselves as musicians. And I think people who are or were thinking like this forgot about it immediately when they can see the band. The music is stronger than that.”
Having been the group’s manager since 2007, Michel visits Kinshasa around three times a year. Of course, the vibrant scene I encountered there in the late ‘80s is no more, but the city has nearly doubled in size since then.
“It’s still an amazing city for music,” he assures me, “because you have all these ethnic groups from all over Congo, so it’s like a concentration of so many different styles. The problem is, the main music that is everywhere, the pop, the ndombolo is quite boring… and it’s working only with the sponsorship of the beer or cell phones, for advertisements. There is no other way for earning money.”
Nevertheless, you can still find ‘tradi- moderne’ groups like Konono No 1 and Kasai All Stars. Although Staff Benda Bilili share certain things in common with these ‘Congotronics’ bands, their emphasis on lyrics sets them apart. And because disabil- ity or homelessness is what most of them have in common, rather than ethnicity, they have a multi-lingual approach, singing in Lingala, Swahili and Kikongo.
“They are completely not ‘ethnic’, they are mixed, urban. From Kinshasa. Everyone is coming from another part,
another tribe, and they really don’t care so much about that. And they are also not religious, like too many people are in the Congo. That’s good because it’s giving them some freedom… because especially when you start to earn money, you have a lot of people coming onto you, all over [saying] if you don’t give money it’s like ‘Ah, you will be sick!’ But they don’t believe that, so it’s OK. They know whom they have to help and who are just like the ones suddenly appearing, you know? And they are generous… they are incredible, [like] a kind of mutual benefit society, very organised, very strong, you cannot make a problem with them.”
That sentiment is echoed by their pro-
ducer Vincent Kenis when I speak to him the following week. He’s back in Brussels after visits to Kinshasa and Madrid, to rehearse and perform the first of the cele- brated ‘Congotronics vs. Rockers’ gigs touring Europe this summer.
“Most of them [Staff Benda Bilili] have bought a house,” he explains in strongly accented but near-perfect English, punctu- ated by short drags on a chain of cigarettes he smokes during our lengthy interview. “They are all really very wise in the way they invest the money. They buy a fridge, to sell frozen meat… Roger bought two video cameras and he’s gonna make a business of filming weddings with his brother. They get into the informal economy very cleverly. It’s really a good thing to see that.”
T
And have their achievements abroad changed things in Kinshasa for disabled people? “Yes, of course, there’s a pride. It goes back to all the people with a handi- cap. If you feel that Staff Benda Bilili get too easily into auto-celebration, remem- ber that their discourse is directed first and foremost towards people who share their curse… it’s them they have in mind when they say ‘We played in Europe, in front of more people than [current stars] Wenge Musica… We did that without getting into the mafia, without any of the shady stuff all these Congolese musicians rely on when they are abroad [such as ‘libanga’ the practice of including advertisements for commercial products and services in a song – sometimes over 100!]. That means that we are really good and we don’t have to take no shit, but that also means that people with a handicap can make it like everybody else.’”
he tour organisers found that because of logistical problems they couldn’t travel with more than eight people, so not all the original members made it to Europe. According to a local newspa- per, some of those forced to remain in Kinshasa formed a breakaway group, which has just been thrown out of the Zoo (used for rehearsal and recording, rather than actually living in, as has been claimed) on the ludicrous pretext they were scaring away the tourists. What tourists? From the look of the miserable caged animals in the film, nothing much has changed at Kinshasa Zoo since I visited it, drawn in off Avenue Kasa-Vubu by the prospect of a bit of peace, some shade, and a teeming colony of cattle egrets nesting in a tree at the gate. I wonder what happened to the old chimpanzee I saw, retching on the concrete floor of its broken-down cage and stooping methodi- cally to lick up its own vomit over and over, locked in some demented behavioural loop.
The satonge player as rock star…
Vincent says the cattle egrets remain, as do many of the old prejudices towards those who didn’t get to go on tour, whether because of problems with health or other issues. “The ones who have not made it to Europe are treated as they were always treated, as hobos, just kicked away, like before… I hope that these guys will be part of the next album. But extreme poverty leads to extreme attitudes, so what can I say?”
Such difficulties aren’t the only ones they had to overcome while recording in Kinshasa. Aside from hassles by corrupt police, the crumbling infrastructure pre- sented serious obstacles. The city’s roads are currently being upgraded by Chinese companies, but this means most arterial routes are blocked or congested.
“It’s a huge city and the transport is
very difficult… And since most of the poor people live like at least 30 kilometres from the centre, it means two to three to four hours of travelling back and forth every day for millions of people. If you want the musicians to be at the rehearsal or the recording at ten o’clock in the morning, they have to wake up at four. And the transport is very bad… You have these buses with exhaust pipes coming inside the cabin and everybody getting sick. So it’s very slow.”
“The second problem is electricity. It’s impossible to work there if you don’t have an electricity generator, because the elec- tricity goes off all the time.” [Vincent explains that his comment about Theo being an ‘electrician’ resulted from reports of Theo directing his son to illegally tap into the city mains – a common practice in Kinshasa – so it’s understandable that he might deny this after becoming famous.]
“And of course, health problems.
Everybody’s sick at one time or another with malaria… or there’s all kinds of little viruses who you don’t know what it is. It’s like a ‘flu but only leaves you without energy, but it lasts three to four days and then it’s gone. There’s nothing you can do about it.” Add to this the high rates of HIV infection and cardiovascular disease – the latter probably a result of the widespread consumption of unhealthy but cheap palm oil…
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