Don’t be deceived by the
light acoustics and sweet-
toned vocals on Lucas San-
tanna’s latest album, O Céu é
Velho há Muito Tempo (The
Sky Has Been Old for Many
Years). This collection of
songs, despite its breezy wrap-
ping, is one that lays into the
politics of Santanna’s native
Brazil with a velvet-covered
sledgehammer. O Céu é Velho
might trip along lightly, but its
subject matter – ecocide, land
appropriation in the Amazon,
civil rights – is weighty.
Since the early days of
tropicália in the 1960s, Bra-
zilian musicians such as Tom
Zé, Gilberto Gil and Caetano
Veloso have perfected the
method of challenging
authoritarianism through
music. Santanna’s background
- he’s from the state of Bahia,
home to tropicália, and he’s
the nephew of Zé, to boot –
is informed in this method
of pop subversives. He uses a
fastidiously arranged back-
ground – guitars, some studio
atmospherics and that’s it – to
accompany a high tenor voice
that delivers lyrics that are
unabashed in speaking truth
to Brazilian power. As he asks
in ‘Portal De Ativação’ (Acti-
vation Portal): ‘Who wants
to speak?’ The bossa nova
flow of ‘Brasil Patriota’ refer-
ences the Brazilian national
anthem and is a denunciation
of judicial corruption; while
the beguiling – very much
a high point of the album
- ‘Ninguém Solta a Mão de
Ninguém’ (We Will Not Let
Go of Each Other’s Hands) is a
fortification of positivity. ‘Meu
Primerio Amor’, a duet with
Brazilian pop star Duda Beat,
provides a quick foray into
one-to-one relations. Other-
wise Santanna’s focus for this
excellent album is clearly on
the body politic. LG
When Kinshasa’s Konono No 1
hit an international audience
some 15 years ago, with its
bricolage of DRC rhythm
and self-made electronics, the
band’s own Congotronic sound
detonated a depth-charge under
‘world music’.
Bantou Mentale is a Paris-
based quartet that now takes
Congotronics to a new level,
reflecting DRC rhythm back
at itself through the prism of
scuzzy, digital dirt offered
from the heaviest of French
electro clubs. In brief, the
experiment is exhilarating.
Bantou Mentale has its roots
in or around Konono. Cubain
Kabeya was both a drummer in
Konono and one of its spin-offs,
Staff Benda Bilili, in which
guitarist Chicco Katembo
played. Liam ‘Doctor L’ Farrell
and singer Apocalypse bring a
different lineage to the mix,
the first an Irish musician long
versed in Afrobeat; the second
a younger, Parisian musician
associated with its soukous
scene. Their debut album is an
hour-long explosion of sound:
the deep, rumbling bass of
Congotronics is stretched in
every which way in songs that
refuse conventional struc-
tures. There’s an atmosphere
that channels both Fela Kuti
and Brian Eno: loose beats
and effects-unit knobs that
are not so much twiddled as
wrenched in the search for
new expressivity. You hear
this in ‘Boloko’, a swinging,
dark blues, while ‘Bakoko’ is
an African feedback rocker.
This is an album that destroys
any preconceptions of hybrid
forms and aesthetics. LG
MUSIC
Bantou Mentale
by Bantou Mentale
(Glitterbeat CD, LP + digital)
glitterbeat.bandcamp.com
++++,
O Céu é Velho há Muito Tempo
by Lucas Santanna
(Nø Førmat! CD + digital)
noformat.net
++++,
Reviews editor: Vanessa Baird
Words: Louise Gray and Malcolm Lewis
MIXED MEDIA
NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2019 79
