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Andy Hall looks beyond appearances.

These guys are the real deal

A couple of months ago, I did a story that reminds me of why I got into photography in the first place....(editorial photography is getting increasingly difficult to maintain as a career - its fast becoming the preserve of the "gentleman" photographer).

A little-known band called Staff Benda Bilili from Kinshasa were making waves in the international music scene, having just won a big music prize.

So what, you might think, but this group of people have a different story to most "rock n roll" bands...they come from the most deprived areas in one of the most deprived, war-torn pats of the world, and if that wasn't hard-core enough, the core members are disabled from polio, that means they can only get about in wheelchairs or crutches.

Only a little while ago they were living on the streets or more specifically, in the grounds of Kinshasa Zoo, living on their wits and talent.

Staff Benda Bilili - which means "look beyond appearances" in the Lingala language, are the funkiest band you will hear, often sliding out of their wheelchairs to breakdance or body popping on their crutches.

The Drummer works an intricate beat on a plastic beer crate,and a nineteen year-old plucks on his home-made string instrument consisting of a piece of wire strung tightly from an old can, dropping to the floor, playing it like Jimi Hendrix would... and during their raucause, hypnotic gigs in the dusty bars of backstreet Kinshasa, the small crowd lap it up.

Whilst most bands have stylists and teams of marketing men behind them, trying to foster reputations of rebelliousness, and globe-trotting, hard-core lifesyles; these guys, mostly in their thirties and forties, do it for real.

Theyr'e not phased or particularily impressed by their new-found fame, and think nothing of touring Europe, (which they are doing right now), America and Japan - a world away from the squalor of back home. They have an energy, and a devil-may-care way thats amazing and totally different to this day and age of corporate ambition.

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Comments

Philip Hall said…
My bro' is the best.
Thursday, 26 November, 2009
Philip Hall said…
And so is staff Benda Bilili
Thursday, 26 November, 2009
The Quiet Busker said…
Funk me, Some lovely images.
Sunday, 29 November, 2009
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