Tres Tres Fort

Interpreter: Staff Benda Bilili
Label: Crammed
Location: DR Congo

The band’s name translates as ‘look beyond appearances’, and indeed this group of paraplegic musicians from the DR Congo make an extraordinary and assured sound that is uniquely theirs. With a hand-made, electric one string lute (a ‘satonge’) often leading the way, the band

touches upon rumba and soukous, sidetracking into funk and reggae and always  delivering rousing call and response choruses to drive the point home. On the slow tempo ‘Polio’, they sing of the reason for their condition, one for which they compensate by travelling around on customised tricycles, but otherwise it’s up-tempo, and absolutely irresistible.

MG/25.03.2009