Visa woes keep Congo band Staff Benda Bilili out of Chicago

BY DAVE HOEKSTRA Staff Reporter/dhoekstra@suntimes.com September 13, 2011 6:44PM

Wheels of fortune are the metaphor for Staff Benda Bilili, the Congoloese reggae-rumba band whose name means “beyond appearances.”

The core of the group is four singer-guitarists who are polio survivors. They perform in homemade tricycles and occasionally tumble out of a seat in liberating musical moments.

Staff Benda Bilili’s remarkable story is covered in the documentary “Benda Bilili!,” a five-year project that traces the band’s journey from the streets to a breakthrough tour of Europe. “Benda Bilili!” will be screened Sunday at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington.

The band was scheduled to make its U.S. debut next week at the World Music Festival: Chicago, but the tour has been canceled due to visa problems. Instead, blues guitarist Boubacar Traore, from Mali, will perform a free concert at 6:30 p.m. Sept. 21 at Millennium Park’s Pritzker Pavilion.

“Benda Bilili” hints at the band’s musical sources such as blues great Elmore James and Cuban son.

“We never heard of Elmore James,” elder band member-vocalist Ricky Likabu said in an interview from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He spoke through a translator provided by Evanston-based Rotary International, a tour sponsor that works on the eradication of polio.

“For years under the Mobutu [dictatorship] regime, Congo was culturally a close country. Very few things arrived to us from abroad. We know James Brown, as he came to Kinshasa [for the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ fight] with Muhammad Ali and George Foreman. He certainly influenced us.

“Our music has inspirations like the traditional styles of blues, rock, rumba, reggae, but don’t most of these styles come from Africa and especially from Congo?”

The band sings in native Lingala with snippets of French. Their songs are of everyday life in their homeland. “Polio” urges parents to have their children vaccainated, and other songs are philosophical, suggesting to listeners, “Don’t forget, the wind can blow the other way.”

Or that “Luck shows up unannounced/I know we will succeed some day.”

The bubbling music of Staff Benda Bilili comes from the density of the streets. Until they were discovered by French filmmakers Renaud Barret and Florent De La Tullaye, most of the band slept on cardboard boxes in Kinshasa (pop. 10,076,099), the capital of the war-torn Congo. “We build the tricycles ourselves with basic motorcycle parts and salvaged material.” said Likabu, a polio survivor. “Music is very important in our society. If you are walking into the streets of any city in Congo, you will hear music coming out of each house or bar.

“Music is helping for surviving.”

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is the second largest country in Africa. Despite the signing of a 2003 peace accord, a civil war that began in 1998 continues in the eastern section of the country. More than 5.4 million people have died since 1998, mostly from disease and starvation, according to Reuters. Mobutu Sese Seko named the country Zaire during his 1965-1997 reign. He was overthrown in 1997, and the nation was renamed the Democtratic Republic of the Congo.

“We had not so much choices until a short time ago,” Likabu explained. “So everybody was listening to the same music. Now its a bit different as hip-hop, metal and other Western styles arrived here, which is what has attracted younger people. Record stores? We only have young street kids selling pirate records in the streets. There’s a bit of music from radio or television, but mainly from other musicians that have opportunities to travel.”

The band plays homemade instruments. Percussion is played by tattered sandals. Band member Roger Landu emerges as a star of “Benda Billi!” playing a satonge, a one-string guitar with a wooden bow stuck into a milk tin can and held together by a single metal wire. It sounds like a high-strung steel guitar.

Likabu, 62, recruited him for the band at age 13. He has bequeathed the conductor position to Landu. Most of the band members have eclipsed the average life expectancy of the Congolese, which is 45 years.

The 85-minute documentary is poignant second by second, but few moments are as moving as when the band seeks respite in the Kinshasa Zoo, filled with emaciated animals, homeless children and street thugs. The group recorded portions of its 2009 album “Tres Tres Fort” in the zoo.

“Its a sad zoo for the animals, but probably the only quiet and peaceful place in the city, ” Likaubu reported. “It’s why many handicapped people or sheque [street kids] are happy to sometimes spend a few hours there to rest. It really looks like a big park. Staff Benda Bilili rehearsed there for many years, and it’s why Vincent [Kenis of their Crammed Discs label] decided to record there as it was the best context. He came with his computer and some basic equipment, we stole the electricity from the street nearby and recorded in the zoo. A few other songs were recorded at the French Cultural Center of Kinshasa with the same equipment. But electricity was provided.”

In October, the “Benda Bilili!” documentary will be released in theaters across the country by National Geographic Entertainment.