As the CIA's web page about the Democratic Republic of the Congo notes, the populous Central African nation is "one of Africa's biggest producers of cannabis, but mostly for domestic consumption." So basically, what they're saying is, the Congolese are a nation of stoners. Which might explain why, despite the lack of wah-wah or echo on the recordings of the Congo's astonishing Konono No. 1, this is some of the more psychoactive music you're likely to hear.

Konono stacks dense layers of polyrhythmic junkyard percussion, thrumming three-note bass lines, topped with call-and-response vocals and their signature sound: highly amplified, distorted likembes (or thumb pianos) throwing out molten globs of repetitive melody, white-hot rivets of sound. It's exotic as hell, of course, and yet a lot of westerners 'ears have already been primed for it by everything from the dense electric music Miles Davis made in the '70s to Remain in Light-era Talking Heads; fans of electro house will immediately grasp the way the grooves rise, crest and subside.

But a puff on the ol 'diambi is strictly optional — Konono's polyrhythms are intoxicating all by themselves, even if the pentatonic scale compresses everything harmonically, and that is the… read more »