THURSDAY NOVEMBER 17

S.O.B's African Concerts
Presents:

KONONO No. 1
From Congo

First American Appearances!

TWO SHOWS!

First Show:
Doors: 6:30 PM
Show: 8:00 PM

Late Show:
Doors: 10:00 PM
Show: 10:30 PM

Admissions: (Both Shows)
$18 Advance $22 Day of

Konono N°1 was founded over 25 years ago by Mingiedi, a virtuoso of the likembé (the traditional instrument sometimes called "sanza" or "thumb piano", consisting of metal rods attached to a resonator). The band's line-up includes three electric likembés (bass, medium and treble), equipped with hand-made microphones built from magnets salvaged from old car parts, and plugged into amplifiers. There's also a rhythm section which uses traditional as well as makeshift percussion (pans, pots and car parts), singers, dancers and a peculiar sound system including megaphones dating from the colonial period, which they call "lance-voix" ('voice-throwers').

The members of Konono N°1 come from an area which sits right across the border between Congo and Angola. Their repertoire draws largely on Bazombo trance music, to which they've had to incorporate the originally-unwanted distorsions of their sound system.

From the New York Times:
"The band plays curious instruments that resemble children's toys; its cymbals look like smashed hub caps; its sound is harsh and otherworldly. But what really makes "Congotronics" (Crammed Discs), the debut album by the African band Konono No. 1, one of the most startling of recent world-music releases - and drawn comparisons to the German electronic-music pioneers Kraftwerk and the reggae producer Lee Perry - is the amplification system the band has used for the last 30 years.

Konono No. 1, a 12-piece group led by the septuagenarian Mawangu Mingiedi, performs in outdoor cafes in Kinshasa, Congo. To make its traditional trance music heard above the roar of the traffic-choked streets, it amplifies its toylike likembés, or thumb pianos, using pick-up microphones made from the magnets in car alternators and loudspeakers left behind by Belgian colonists in 1960. The squalling feedback this lo-fi system produces is worked into the polyrhythmic drumming and call-and-response chanting to create a brutal, neotraditional genre Kinshasa's musicians call tradi-moderne."
-Andy Pemberton

at and the SOB's Box Office