Tuesday, January 11, 2005  

Konono No. 1
"Mama Liza" edit
Congotronics
(Crammed Discs, 2005)

I finally got my hands on this Konono No. 1 CD (thx, Marc!), and it lived up to every expectation. Because it was recorded in studio conditions the sound is much fuller than the live disc on Terp that I wrote about recently, but the weird distortions and otherworldlyness of the whole Konono vibe in very much intact. (I lopped off the last four minutes of the usually 10-minute long "Mama Liza" because my bandwidth for the month is already tight. Besides---BUY THIS CD.)

Here's a letter I received from Vincent Kenis, the talented producer who recorded Konono and the man behind Crammed Discs' forthcoming series of Congotronics releases, explaining how he came across the band and what went into making the CD:

I first heard the group in 1979 on a France Culture broadcast and was blown away. Soon after I played the music to Congolese musician Ray Lema, claiming rather provokingly that this was "the Congolese music of the future." A while later we met in a studio where he was preparing his new album. Without a word, he handed me the headphones... the track he was working on featured a synthesized imitation of Konono's likembe sound. I also did my own interpretation of Konono when playing guitar on Zazou/Bikaye's Noir et Blanc album (1983). The France Culture recordings, produced by Bernard Treton, came out in 1985 on Radio France's label Ocora (Musiques Urbaines a Kinshasa). Only 15 years later did I finally get a chance to see the group live.

In 1989 I went to Kinshasa & looked for Konono No. 1 and Muyamba Nyunyi (also featured on Treton's tapes) but couldn't find them. I did meet Swede Swede, another "tradi-modern" group with whom I recorded the album Toleki Bango in Brussels the following year -- this was my first job as a producer, the second being Adventures in Afropea by Zap Mama. In Kin again in 1996 I was told that Konono No. 1 had ceased their activities and were scattered between Congo and Angola. Then in 2000 the president of their fan club told me that the group was expected to return from Angola soon. I left a note and promised I'd be back in a few months. In July Le Tout Puissant Likembe Konono No. 1 was ready for an audition, complete with 3 electric likembes, a drumkit made of hub caps, and a PA system made of two "lance-voix" ("voice-throwers," i.e. megaphones used by the Belgian colonizers before independence to diffuse radio broadcasts in the streets) which were probably the same ones featured on the 1978 recordings. I like to think that Konono No. 1 partly owes its resurrection to me -- but I suppose this is a favorite fantasy of all producers!

In 2002 my friend Tony Vander Eecken convinced Alain Weber and La Cite de la Musique in Paris to invite them for a concert the following year. Soon after I was in Kinshasa to record Folkas, a Kasaian all-star group including Muyamba Nyunyi. I planned to record a Konono CD live in Europe but just in case something went wrong I recorded the group at the Centre Culturel Francais a few days before I left Kinshasa.

The recordings were done outside, in 16 tracks, using a Macintosh G4 laptop computer -- a first under these latitudes. This was a risky choice but it turned out to work flawlessly -- actually a hard disk is much less sensitive to dust, humidity and power spikes than a digital tape recorder. Plus you can backup immediately... Mingiedi, the lead likembe player, wanted to use the Twin Reverb amp I had brought from Belgium. One of the musicians who spoke a bit of French translated: Mingiedi needed a "clear sound." I feared a tragic cultural misunderstanding. I accepted his choice though obviously I'd rather have him use the equipment he was familiar with. We recorded one song but the music wasn't really happening. Before the second take, I surreptitiously inserted a guitar distortion pedal on Mingiedi's likembe. When he started playing I saw a big smile on his face... and from then on the music took off.

This episode reminded me of an interview of Belgian jazz guitarist Rene Thomas I had read in the Melody Maker in the early 70s: when asked what he thought about Jimi Hendrix he went into a very embarrassing rant about early Delta bluesmen not needing all this electronic shit... a few weeks later I nevertheless went to see him in concert, he had a tiny Burns amp, the sound was gorgeous, a lot of feedback and nice distortion, very Hendrixian... Rene controlled it well and apparently enjoyed it very much, not bothering to analyze what exactly he enjoyed -- just like Mingiedi.

Computer-based recording enabled me to take the "studio" in my hotel room right after the session and do rough mixes with the help of the musicians, making sure they liked what they heard. The bass track was found to be a bit weak so I tried different tricks to give it some body. I accidentally ended up with a big reggae bass sound. Everybody was excited and wanted it on the record. The event opened thrilling new perspectives for me: after all, sound is sound, rhythm is rhythm, some things work and some don't, regardless of the cultural background -- and it's so much better to navigate between sonic pitfalls together with the musicians and get to an enlightened agreement, so to speak, rather than deciding alone in a vacuum what their music should sound like... and, more often than not, restraining oneself from doing too crazy things by fear of killing the group's "authenticity." I planned to do the final mixes of Konono's CD with Konono, if possible, to get that exciting feedback.

Konono arrived in Paris in February 2003. Their concert was well received but personally I was a bit disappointed: the "lance-voix" had stayed home, the sound engineer from Cite de la Musique had bypassed the likembes hand-made pickups because their extremely high output distorted his desk and nobody had told him this wasn't necessarily a bad thing... As a result, the group sounded nothing like in Kinshasa. Also, everybody in the group looked very contrived, wearing flowery uniforms in the style of official folklore groups from the Mobutu era... except their 'president' who stood still on the side of the stage in a dark suit, a pink folder under his arm. A few concerts in Holland fared better, generating a lot of excitement among the rock oriented but sparse audience. Unfortunately none of these venues was suitable for live recording, except the Paradiso, where some missing members had to be replaced by musicians recruited at the last minute, an interesting experience but not representative of the "real" Konono. Unfortunately the group left Europe without having been recorded live properly.

Listening back to the Kinshasa session and comparing it to the European gigs, I had no regrets: this was the best Konono music I had heard so far; I had everything I needed for a great CD. The problem was to promote that CD in the absence of the group: since Congolese star Papa Wemba had been arrested for smuggling fake musicians in Europe, chances to get Belgian visas for any Congolese group were zero, and would be for a while... also, as I said before, I really wanted to mix the album in Kinshasa with the musicians, and the new computer I wanted for this (a Macintosh G5) just came out and needed to be tested before I could risk to rely on it exclusively, since there are no reliable recording studios in Kinshasa. So I decided to wait for a while.

When it turned out that I wouldn't be able to travel to Kinshasa in time for the record to be ready before 2005, I finally decided to mix it at home, just like if I was in Kinshasa. The G5 / Logic Pro / Genelecs 1030 combination turned out to be very reliable and inspiring for mixing. I kept the original balance and the bass sound from the hotel room session, just added some subliminal magic and a few breaks... Luckily Konono was very satisfied with the result, but I definitely plan to mix the rest of the Congotronics series in Kinshasa with the collaboration of the musicians.

The next CD will come out late spring and feature a few songs of Folkas (the final name of the group hasn't been decided yet) and at least five other amplified traditional groups. We'll possibly ask some remixers to contribute. Maybe it'll be a CD+DVD.

As for Konono, they definitely will be touring Europe this summer.

Of course I'm at your disposal should you need more info.

Best regards,

Vincent Kenis
Crammed Discs and associated labels
www.crammed.be

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