Congo Animal by Bantou Mentale

Bantou Mentale are to the Congo what Björk is to Iceland, Kraftwerk to Germany or Metronomy to the UK – of a place, but not defined by it, not flying any particular flag. Their ‘hood is one part Kinshasa Grand Marché, one part Paris Chateau Rouge, and one part YouTube. Their roots are in the forest, with the first people. Their outer branches are in the technosphere, beyond old horizons.

You could call it the future sound of the Congo. But can music really represent a country or a place any more, when everyone’s living together in new neighbourhoods with strange deracinated names - Soundcloud, WhatsApp, Zoom, Instagram?

But perhaps the virus has reminded us of something that Africa never forgot, which is the art of living for today, of hanging out, making do, surviving on less, depending on your neighbours and being content with a few chairs on a street corner, a few beers, a few friends. We need all types of a neighbourhood, the old and the new. That’s the truth.
True, the virus won’t allow you to be a party animal, a drunk and grimy late night city-skank animal. It forbids you to get on stage and crank it up like a rock’n’roll animal. But you can still be a beat animal, a techno animal, a Congo Animal, in that other sphere, the one we all live part of our lives in now.

Here’s soundtrack for that new world, mashed together from bits of over-cranked kalimba, Kasai beat inspiration, keening vocals from Apocalypse, Cubain Kabeya’s percussion and voice, Chicco’s guitar, all looped, sequenced, cloned by Doctor L, locked down in Dakar.