Home » Jazz Musicians » Konono No.1
Konono No.1
The remarkable music created by Konono No 1 is based around the crackling hum generated by their homemade amplification system. The musicians utilise this electronic vibration to great effect, with the three likembés (bass, medium, treble) sounding remarkably like electric guitars fed through very cheap amplifiers, and the clattering percussion providing an insistent, infectious beat.
The group enjoyed some success in their homeland and even recorded the odd side for local compilations, but it was not until the start of the new millennium that their music began to be heard by a global audience. They were invited on tour by Dutch anarcho-punks the Ex, who also released a live set in 2004 on their Terp Records imprint. Word-of-mouth about the group began to fly around, with many excited commentators comparing their sound to the work of many contemporary electronic and experimental rock acts, despite Konono No 1 being effectively isolated from developments in modern music over the previous 25 years. The Belgium label Crammed Discs got the group into a studio and the result was the wonderful Congotronics. Wisely, the label did not meddle with the group’s sound or set-up and the result was one of the highlights of the musical year. Musicians appearing alongside Mingiedi include Mawangu Veta, Mawangu Makuntima, Waku Menga, Mbuta Makonda, Vincent Visi, Ndofusu Mbiyavanga and Pauline Mbuka Nsiala.
Source: The Encyclopedia of Popular Music by Colin Larkin. Licensed from Muze. Source: Colin Larkin
Tags
Konono No.1: Meets Batida
by James Nadal
The city of Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is the home of Konono No.1, a band which has taken the African likembé (thumb piano) from a folkloric instrument, into the electronic age. Back in the sixties, it's founder Mingiedi Mawangu figured out how to amplify the likembé, using salvaged car parts, and wired it through a guitar amp. Though he passed in 2015, his son Agustin Makuntima Mawangu carries on as leader, maintaining the amplified likembé as ...
read moreKonono No.1: Congotronics
by Chris May
Once in a while an album comes along which is so insanely wonderful that--jazz or not--it needs to be brought to the attention of this community. Such an album is Congotronics by Kinshasa trance band Konono No.1.
Unless you live in Kinshasa, or were at Amsterdam's Paradiso club last year for the recording of track five, you are unlikely to have heard anything remotely like this throbbing slab of mutant roots meet lo-tech/hi-decibel electronica heaven ever before in ...
read more