Even though international audiences may not fully grasp the weight of Konono’s music, there are numerous layers to explore — aural, historical, and spiritual. They are like layers of earth — gravelly guitar rifts and the deep, clay-like warmth of skin drums under the fertile topsoil of shouts, drums, and bass guitar. Kenis sought to preserve these layers by recording in Kinshasa.
“I’ve noticed that what works in the dense sense eventually works everywhere — you just have to find the right method,” he says, noting that in this case, the right method involves thinking like the band and utilizing even a corrugated iron roof if it suits its purposes. “I always put two microphones pointed toward that ceiling, and it gives that really industrial reverb.”
Despite challenges like finding reliable electricity, the environment in Kinshasa lends itself to recording because limitations often drive creativity. Like Crammed Discs label mate Staff Benda Bilili, a group of paraplegic musicians also from Kinshasa, Konono is fortunate, in one sense, to have had its formative years outside the spotlight.
“You can see it really clearly in guitar players from Congo coming to Europe,” Kenis says. “As soon as they come here, they…start imitating music from Europe. Because they’ve been isolated from it for so long, they don’t have the tools to understand it. They miss the whole point of what’s really interesting. They lose the specificity, which is bad. But of course, staying isolated is bad also. The thing is to get the tools to understand what’s going on around you.”
Konono’s identity is secure, at least for the older generation of players. Kenis describes Mingiedi by saying, “He could tour the world for 200 years, and he wouldn’t change a bit in the way he plays.” However, Mingiedi’s son Augustin, who has taken over playing the lead likembe part, is much more aware of outside musical influence.
This paradigmatic tension between generations helps flavor Assume Crash Position, which adds additional instruments and influences to the band’s Bazombo style in a piecemeal production process, which took place in a Kinshasan hotel room.
“I record everything with a Mac Book Pro computer,” Kenis says, “so I can take it wherever I like. The rest of the production work was to invite people into my hotel room and hand them a guitar or…a fader, or even the mouse and say, ‘Okay, just fool around with this and see what happens.’ If I have a role, it’s like a translator. [It’s the] difference between a literal and a literary translation. I’m just trying to interpret it in a way that is more clearly legible.”
Although Mingiedi, who is illiterate, and his bandmates weren’t used to recording on the computer, Kenis says that they intuitively understood it and became collaborators during the production stage. He found it odd that in this way, without a formal studio and with a continuously open dialogue, much of the demonizing that has infected the culture of Congo was stripped away. When the Congolese elite needed an enemy and a scapegoat, whites fit the bill, but Kenis says that the recording process transcends this type of ideology, and his status as an outsider even allows him a different perspective.
“As a stranger, I can suggest things that they would never dream of doing. For example, a guy from Kasai would never play music with a Konono, because he’s from Kasai and he’s from Bakongo — period. But…when they realize that it indeed works musically, it’s a big surprise for them. It changes the way they see their own music. That’s really fascinating for me, to see that what’s not supposed to work does work.”