Balka Sound

A rare vinyl copy of Balka Sound’s 1984 album Afro Musik Creation is currently on offer at $275 on the internet, so this first ever anthology culled from the three LPs the group made in the 1980s is highly welcome. Hailing from Congo-Brazzaville and led by singer Nkibi ‘Lusialala’ Albert and guitarist René Possou, the 15 tracks compiled here find the band re-imagining the traditional balka folk rhythms of the Beembe people with electric guitars, horns, bass and drums, but with the metallic sound of the traditional five-stringed lute, the ngonfi, placed at the sound’s core.

The Beembe are a small tribe, estimated at no more than 80,000 in a population of five million, but their musical heritage runs deep. It’s beguiling sound has nothing in common with the sophisticated grooves of Congolese rumba or soukous and is altogether earthier as the metal strings of the ngonfi create clattering, syncopated rhythms over which the horns jam with improvised freedom, while the vocals are kept to little more than hypnotic tribal chants.

Balka Sound eventually broke up during the civil war of the 90s, but its members were involved in assembling this revelatory collection, which is smartly presented, complete with band history, archive photos and a track-by-track commentary.