Staff Benda Bilili: African disability beats hit the UK

Staff Benda Bilili playing at London's Barbican Hall on 10 November 2009. Taken by Scott McMillan

5 of the group’s 8 members are polio survivers, with varying degrees of mobility impairment. This includes band leader Ricky. He told me that originally, he had tried to join various non-disabled groups with little success.

“They were afraid I wouldn’t turn up to rehearsals on time and that I wouldn’t be able to dance. All musicians in our country have to dance as well as play.”

So in the spirit of if you can’t join them, beet them, Ricky took matters into his own hands.

“I spoke to some friends who sung with me in church, and we started Staff Benda Bilili, which means look beyond appearances.”

Emma with Ricky and fellow band member Theo .

While beginning to make waves with their music, playing for tourists outside fancy restaurants, Ricky and the other band members continued with their already full and busy lives. As well as travelling the streets of DRC’s capital city, Kinshasa, in his impressively customised wheelchair, working as a sometimes cigarette seller and sometimes tailor, Ricky has two wives to support.

“One of my wives is disabled because of polio and one is not. I met the first while we were trafficking on the river Congo.”

He explained that in the 70s, the country’s then president, Mobutu, lowered customs taxes for disabled people, which meant they could travel more cheaply than others across the river Congo. Some made a living by charging people to travel as their helpers and carried goods in their wheelchairs. Ricky and his now wife made a living this way.

As a slightly humbled and undoubtedly privileged blind person in the western world, I took this opportunity to ask Ricky what life is like for a disabled person in the DRC. He told me that he and his family, disabled and non-disabled, live like everyone else with no problems. He says that he was never treated any differently as a child, citing his ability to speak French, as well as the local language Lingala, as evidence of education. Ricky did admit however that, in a country where fighting takes place on a regular basis, polio ensured that one particular career path was firmly closed off to him.

“If I hadn’t been disabled, I may have ended up as a soldier. Who knows.”

Instead, Ricky is fighting for a better life for his family and the families of all the other group members, who live from hand to mouth, day to day, in inadequate housing. They got one step closer to this goal when Staff were discovered by a French film maker, who has now been documenting their progress since 2004. Subsequently, a Belgian music producer, who has worked with other big Congolese names, came on board to produce their debut album.

But this fascinating disability back story alone doesn’t fill a top class London venue. So what is their secret?

The much talked about customised wheelchairs.

There is no gimmick. Staff Benda Bilili are, as their album title Tres Tres Fort suggests: 'very very strong'; both musically and in how they perform.

Atop the African rhythms and western style chord progressions which seem to be hot right now, the 3 main vocalists sing with passion and fabulous harmonies about polio, love and other important issues while the band’s MC dances, raps and improvises with real conviction. I'm told that the band's crutches were waved and danced with, wheelchairs were abandoned in favour of somersaults, and all of them take every opportunity to move to the music. And as if it wasn't already a visual and autible spectacle of some merit, enter Roger.

Roger is a 17 year old street kid who Staff adopted some years ago and who just happens to be an extraordinarily talented musician and the band’s other unique selling point. Throughout the show, he plays ever more extravagant solos on a 1 stringed instrument which he fashioned himself from a milk can, the frame of a fish basket and some electrical wire. The resulting sound is something between an electric guitar and a Theremin. It’s captivating.

Staff Benda Bilili’s live show is a fast, high energy, movement filled feast giving everyone in the room, even this blindy with two left feet, the urge to get up and dance, clap and be joyful. And the world music bods are right to wax lyrical about this little-known explosion of music and life. Their sound, their story and their future prospects are very, very exciting.

Ricky from Staff Benda Bilili performing at London's Barbican Hall, 10 November 2009. Taken by Scott McMillan

Expecting to get an answer involving travel, luxury and world domination, I asked Ricky about his aspirations for Staff Benda Bilili and got a very grounded response.

“We want to make things better for our families. First we will build houses for each of them and then we will make sure all of our children are well educated”.

• Tres Tres Fort is Staff Benda Bilili’s debut album

• The band are currently on a 9 date tour of the UK