Polymetric trance

I had the opportunity last year to see the first U.S. appearance by a wonderful African group called Konono No. 1. Founded over 25 years ago by Mingiedi, the virtuoso electric likembe (“thumb-piano”) player, Konono No. 1 plays a style of music that started in the suburbs of Kinshasa, but their roots can be traced back roughly a thousand years to traditional African trance music. Along with three likembes, Konono No. 1 uses megaphones, old car parts, drums, and hand-made microphones that all give the tradition a twist.

But instead of reviewing Konono No. 1’s Congotronics, I’m just going to recommend it. It’s great. The second volume, Congotronics 2, has recently been released. It collects eight more groups from different geographical and cultural backgrounds and includes a DVD of wonderful performances.

In order to fully understand the Konono No. 1 album, you need some sort of history for their main instrument, the thumb-piano. There are many names for it: likembe, karimba, mbila, mbira, and others. Even though Konono refers to theirs as a likembe, I’m going to be calling it the mbira (pronounced mmm-bee-rah), which is how most ethnomusicologists refer to it.

Mbira music has a specific function: to connect the living with the spirits of their ancestors. The people gather together in an all night, family-based, communal ritual to reach out to their ancestors for help and guidance. Along with the mbira, performances usually include hand clapping, gourd rattling, singing, and dancing until participants reach a trance-like state. Paul Berliner, an ethnomusicologist who studies the Shona people, describes it this way:

Humans and spirits communicate by means of possession trances. In possession, a spirit enters the body of a living person, temporarily supplanting his or her spirit. Once embodied in its medium, an ancestral spirit can advise his or her living relatives, telling them things they have done wrong and how to protect themselves and ensure good fortune.

Most mbiras consist of a set of thin keys made of metal, a resonator to amplify the sound (Konono No. 1 has incorporated a pick-up making it electric), and shells or bottle caps that buzz when the keys are played. It’s tuned to a seven-pitch scale over three octaves which symbolically link the keys to family relationships, emotional or physical responses to music, and animal imagery. The keys are plucked in complex patterns, improvising cycles of harmony, rhythm, and melody. The musicians and audience listen closely to each other, clapping and playing in 3:2, working each other into a polyphonic trance. Their ancestors are said to have favorite pieces which have been handed down for hundreds and even thousands of years. This tradition was almost lost due to British colonization, but the mbira worked as a positive cultural symbol that people stood behind.

I also recommend, as a companion to the Congotronics series, a great album called African Mbira: Music of the Shona People of Rhodesia. It’s a collection of field recordings of traditional mbira music from the 60s and 70s that gives some history and background to an amazing instrument and an amazing culture.

3 responses to “Polymetric trance”

  1. Lane says:

    This is interesting stuff. If anyone likes this type of sound check Doug Schulkind’s show “Give the Drummer Some” Fridays 9-12 on WFMU

  2. […] 1. You don’t listen to as many albums beginning to end as you used to. Instead you want suprises, the uncanny, a drum beat from one culture or historical period bleeding into the same beat in another, the whine of a Punjabi chanter turning the corner so easily into Tom Verlaine (preferably something from a late solo album no one actually owns). In freeform radio — as in a good mixtape — the transitions are key, and a good set has a 30-minute arc of uninterrupted transitional bliss, an almost narrative arc, before a DJ returns. Though I’m still striving to achieve the ideal freeform iPod — downloading everything from my brother’s mbira collection, to all those recent compilations of German and French new wave bands, to catalogs of early Russian electronic music — I realize that the shuffle function will never replace a DJ like Trouble. (Plus, my iPod doesn’t have her giggle; nor does it have tweety birds; nor does it have a “Good Morning” for me first-thing on Thursdays; nor can it show up as Meg and Wolf’s guest at Record Club.) […]

  3. World’s History at Culture Club…

    I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…