Mbongwana Star
Biography
Growing out of the hugely successful group Staff Benda Bilili, Mbongwana Star are World Circuit’s only excursion into Congolese music. Kinshasa, the group’s home, is a maelstrom of music where musicians are endlessly inventive in recycling everything to create dynamic new sounds.
There are few bands that have been blessed by the ‘Buena Vista effect’ – that perfect meeting of a superb album, an award-winning documentary and a fascinating back story. It happened, of course, with the original Buena Vista Social Club album and Wim Wenders’ film. But it also happened with Staff Benda Bilili’s debut album Très Très Fort (Crammed Discs) in 2009 and the documentary Benda Bilili! directed by Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye, awarded in Cannes.
Staff Benda Bilili were a group of veteran musicians, disabled from polio, in customised wheelchairs who had got together on the streets of Kinshasa and lived and rehearsed in Kinshasa’s decrepit zoo. They were joined by a number of younger musicians and after their story and music attracted attention, found themselves lured out from the shanty-town streets of Kinshasa to prestigious festivals around the world.
They recorded their follow-up album Bouger le Monde! (Crammed Discs) in 2012. This was produced in a Kinshasa studio (where Franco and Papa Wemba also recorded), so it sounds smoother and more professional.
But speedy success and international stardom can have its downside. Conflicts emerged within the band and with the management and in 2013 two members, chief songwriter Coco Ngambali and singer and guitarist Théo Ntsituvuidi, announced they were quitting. The irony is that global success destroyed in less than four years a band that had survived in one of the most challenging cities in the world for six.
Coco and Théo decided to start something new and teamed up with younger musicians to create a futuristic Afro-modern sound for Mbongwana Star. From Kinshasa (2015), their World Circuit debut, has artwork with retro-style astronauts which seems an apt metaphor for the music which is rooted in tradition, but loaded with distortion, reverb and electronica. “As soon as a little burst of familiarity appears, Mbongwana Star have a winning habit of snatching it away, wrong footing you, shifting their music somewhere you don’t expect”, wrote Alexis Petridis, a big fan, in The Guardian.
The producer behind From Kinshasa was Liam Farrell (aka Doctor L), the son of an Irish painter who grew up in Paris and became involved in the Parisian hip hop and electro scenes before applying his maverick aesthetic to African music. “I wanted to change the classical pre-conceptions about African music,” says Farrell. “Kinshasa reminds me of New York in the 1980s…a place where you could have a punk band, a gay band, a new wave band…what the fuck! Like everywhere else, Africa deserves to have artists who can choose whether they’re related 100% to Africa or not. We’re not talking about Africa, or wheelchairs, we’re talking about guys who are doing music.”
“That’s the direction we should go in,” said Théo. “Mbongwana means ‘change’, because that’s the future.”
But African music can’t ignore its past and on the track ‘Malukayi’, the celebrated Konono No. 1 appear with their super-amplified likembe thumb pianos linking Mbongwana Star to the very 21st century Congotronics tradition.
Mbongwana Star isn’t an African band per se. It’s a trans-global barrier-busting sound machine that demands the unfettered horizons of any artist who values originality and creativity, wherever in the world he or she might live.
BIOGRAPHY
Growing out of the hugely successful group Staff Benda Bilili, Mbongwana Star are World Circuit’s only excursion into Congolese music. Kinshasa, the group’s home, is a maelstrom of music where musicians are endlessly inventive in recycling everything to create dynamic new sounds.
There are few bands that have been blessed by the ‘Buena Vista effect’ – that perfect meeting of a superb album, an award-winning documentary and a fascinating back story. It happened, of course, with the original Buena Vista Social Club album and Wim Wenders’ film. But it also happened with Staff Benda Bilili’s debut album Très Très Fort (Crammed Discs) in 2009 and the documentary Benda Bilili! directed by Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye, awarded in Cannes.
Staff Benda Bilili were a group of veteran musicians, disabled from polio, in customised wheelchairs who had got together on the streets of Kinshasa and lived and rehearsed in Kinshasa’s decrepit zoo. They were joined by a number of younger musicians and after their story and music attracted attention, found themselves lured out from the shanty-town streets of Kinshasa to prestigious festivals around the world.
They recorded their follow-up album Bouger le Monde! (Crammed Discs) in 2012. This was produced in a Kinshasa studio (where Franco and Papa Wemba also recorded), so it sounds smoother and more professional.
But speedy success and international stardom can have its downside. Conflicts emerged within the band and with the management and in 2013 two members, chief songwriter Coco Ngambali and singer and guitarist Théo Ntsituvuidi, announced they were quitting. The irony is that global success destroyed in less than four years a band that had survived in one of the most challenging cities in the world for six.
Coco and Théo decided to start something new and teamed up with younger musicians to create a futuristic Afro-modern sound for Mbongwana Star. From Kinshasa (2015), their World Circuit debut, has artwork with retro-style astronauts which seems an apt metaphor for the music which is rooted in tradition, but loaded with distortion, reverb and electronica. “As soon as a little burst of familiarity appears, Mbongwana Star have a winning habit of snatching it away, wrong footing you, shifting their music somewhere you don’t expect”, wrote Alexis Petridis, a big fan, in The Guardian.
The producer behind From Kinshasa was Liam Farrell (aka Doctor L), the son of an Irish painter who grew up in Paris and became involved in the Parisian hip hop and electro scenes before applying his maverick aesthetic to African music. “I wanted to change the classical pre-conceptions about African music,” says Farrell. “Kinshasa reminds me of New York in the 1980s…a place where you could have a punk band, a gay band, a new wave band…what the fuck! Like everywhere else, Africa deserves to have artists who can choose whether they’re related 100% to Africa or not. We’re not talking about Africa, or wheelchairs, we’re talking about guys who are doing music.”
“That’s the direction we should go in,” said Théo. “Mbongwana means ‘change’, because that’s the future.”
But African music can’t ignore its past and on the track ‘Malukayi’, the celebrated Konono No. 1 appear with their super-amplified likembe thumb pianos linking Mbongwana Star to the very 21st century Congotronics tradition.
Mbongwana Star isn’t an African band per se. It’s a trans-global barrier-busting sound machine that demands the unfettered horizons of any artist who values originality and creativity, wherever in the world he or she might live.