Music Born of Car Parts and Traffic Jams

By ELISA BRAY

World music

KONONO NO 1 Tate Modern LONDON

The opening night of Tate Modern’s three-day bank holiday celebration, The Long Weekend, brings together the work of two influential African artists.

Dissonant polyrhythmic dance grooves are provided by the Congolese band Konono No 1, who coined the term ‘congotronics’, mixing the musical traditions of their Bozambo tribe with backyard electronica.

Konono No 1′s distinct brand of Congolese trance music is created through electric likembes (a traditional instrument also known as a “thumb piano”) with hand-crafted microphones assembled from salvaged car parts and then amplified. The BBC World Music award winning group is led by 75-year-old Mawangu Mingiedi.

Two groundbreaking films by the late Senegalese director Djibril Diop Mambety will also be shown. Mambety is regarded as the most talented film-maker to emerge from Africa at the end of the Sixties, with his satirical presentation of colonialism, and his atypical narrative style. His first feature, the 1970 film Badou Boy, will be screened with its original soundtrack, while his debut film, Contras City, a short made in 1969, will be accompanied live by Konono No 1 before their full set.

Stuart Comer, curator of the event said: “It’s a rare chance to see Konono No 1, and although their music is decidedly from Africa, many people have made the connection to electronic music and minimalist music by people like Steve Reich. The industrial nature of the Turbine Hall space will be a dramatic setting and they’re going to sound incredible in it.”

When Mingiedi started performing in Kinshasa, he had to add distortion and more percussion to make himself heard above the din of the city. “It’s the notion of trying to be heard, of trying to express a situation and ending up finding a voice that is incredibly eloquent,” explains Comer.

The Long Weekend is related to the ongoing exhibition at the Tate Modern of photographs by the Malian self-taught portrait photographer, Seydou Keita.

23 May (020-7887 8888)

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