Mpongo Love

Music from Congo is generally guitar based, but this track by Mpongo Love features the piano heavily and is quite brilliant. Oh, by the way the track is over 9mins long and there's a piano solo at about 5.15

Mpongo Love - Ndaya

Comments

[Bruce Triggs]

I've just been getting into some Congolese music. I literally woke up one morning with the words "Belgian Congo" in my head, thinking of all the Belgian accordion music we have played, and my interest in African accordion.

A few searches turned up a whole history of use of the squeezebox in Congolese Rumba music. And one amazing video from an equally amazing set of modern urban electric music that has the European electronic dance scene all agape because it sounds like so much experimental (think CAN from the '70s) music.

Bolia We Ndenge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw77mj7dZTo

This video shows a dramatization of the introduction of he accordion as part of a pacification plan by the king of Belgium's slave labor campaign that killed 3-6 million people. Horrible, horrible history, but still it was adopted into the indigenous (surviving) music. Perhaps the worst example of the accordion in it's role as rapidly spreading global cultural invader in the later 1800's and early 1900's.

From the DVD: Congotronics 2
http://www.congotronics.com/

[Orange]

Would you please send me more pictures of mpongo love?

thanks...