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Great American Music Hall April 28, 2007 Review by Jake Thomas This show felt like the taping of a National Geographic special to me, or at least the kid in me. If that comes off wrong I apologize, but in my white bread upbringing, and even most of my adult life, you don't often come across music like I heard produced at this live outing. Konono No. 1 come from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a country in constant struggle for over 40 years thanks to US meddling and a home grown dictator known as Mobutu. Without getting into all the details, and there are a lot of them, the country and it's people have faced hardship for ages, forcing the populace to become quite resourceful. This applies specifically to Konono No. 1 ñ as the band formed in the 80's, they found a need to create a method of amplifying their sound so they may be heard playing on the streets of hectic Kinshasa, so they built amps out of spare parts and junk found on the street. While their intentions were to recreate the tribal sounds they grew up with, the end result is much more than that ñ the homemade amplification transformed the centuries-old music styles into something completely modern and entrancing. These homemade amps are just as much a part of the band as the actual musicians, and lucky for us fans they tour with this unique amplification so that we can hear the buzz and pops and clicks in their fullest glory. Konono No. 1 was simply entrancing this evening...they played a number of songs from their ìCongotronicsî release, the album that set them on the road to fame outside of their home town. And I wasn't the only one digging it ñ the crowd was dancing up a storm from the front of the room to the back, by far the most rump shaking that I have seen at a live music show in a long, long time. It was also about the most diverse crowd I've ever seen ñ hipsters to hippies, rastas to rockers, old and young, and every color of the spectrum. It was quite a site to behold, a site I was very happy to be enjoying in person.
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