more more more… future

Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian Programme
10 > 11 November — 9pm
Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Great Auditorium

“Ndombolo, which has haunted my work for many years… Bastard daughter of rumba, of traditional rhythms, fanfares on Sundays at church and Sex Machine funk, pimped by local breweries (like Primus, Skol or some other), Congolese pop exudes energy in endless songs… Concerts invite you for 9 o´clock, but don’t come before midnight, and be prepared to stay until dawn… when the traffic resumes in sleepy Kin. Then we hear the sound, the big, saturated sound, of pieces that we know by heart, we drink, beer, of course (Primus or Skol, always the same story…), we eat kebabs, we chat up, we dance. Musicians come and go, on and off stage… singing their own praises, about power, beauty, beautiful women and beautiful things, glitzy clothes and fancy cars… a life of dreams, like American TV series and R&B clips. As if it all were a matter of course in a country where everything has to be started from scratch every morning… So why not use the extraordinary energy of the guitars and voices, not to nurture daydreams as thin as the cheap paper tissues sold in the streets of Kinshasa that fall apart on your sweaty face, but to sing about the difficulties, the stalemates, the mistakes, the so poor legacy of our fathers… I think of the energy of the punk movements in Europe and the US in the ‘70s and ‘80s… How young people used music to break everything down in a self-proclaimed no future society… It’s hard for us to refuse a future that we’ve never had, even harder to destroy our heap of ruins, but we can only dream with our feet on the ground, and build a little more future on these ruins…”

Artistic director: Faustin Linyekula  Musical director: Flamme Kapaya; Musicians: Patou “Tempête” Kayembe, Le Coq, Pasnas + bassist & guitarist (names to be confirmed). Dancers: Dinozord, Papy Ebotani, Faustin Linyekula. Costume: Xuly Bët, Paris. Texts: Antoine Vumilia Muhindo. Management: Virginie Dupray.

Tickets: € 15 / 30% discount for over 65s and 50% discount for under 25s; 1hr 40mins without intermission; 6+