Album of the Week: Staff Benda Bilili - Tres Tres Fort

The thing about a band like Staff Benda Bilili is that they could be easily written off as a novelty. The group of Congolese street performers consists primarily of paraplegic singer/guitarists who make their way around in specially designed tricycles. The perform in slums and outside the Kinshasa Zoo, and the group’s shining star in a 18 year old musical prodigy who plays his own makeshift single-stringed electric lute that he constructed out of a tin can. Yeah, that’s the type of shit that gets P.R. people salivating. Yet this amazing back story would mean nothing if the music on Tres Tres Fort were not any good. Thankfully, it’s good. Staff Benda Bilili’s unique mixture of rumba, reggae, and traditional rhythm and blues does not quite sound like anything else out there. Some affinities could be made to other bands produced by Tres Tres Fort producer Vincent Kenis (Konono No.1, Kasai Allstars, the the Congotronics compilations) and those who enjoyed Welcome to Mali, last’s years incredible release by Mariam & Amadou, are bound to like this release. Yet these comparison points pale. The album sounds forward thinking while reverting away from the wave of electronics and digital editing that has plagued contemporary Western music this past decade. Tres Tres Fort is one of the sweetest sounding and most inspiration albums of the year by far.

Listen To: Je T’aime, Polio, Avramandole

RIYL: Kasai Allstars, Mariam & Amadou, the Congotronics series