WHEN Konono No 1’s Congotronics landed in 2004, it turned world music upside down. A multigenerational group from Kinshasa in Democratic Republic of the Congo, its ‘tradi-modern’ sound – Bazombo ritual music played on electrified likembé thumb pianos and scrap percussion through jerry-rigged amplifiers – was crude, raw and enormously fun. “I first heard Konono in the ’80s, on a tape by a guy working for Congolese radio,” recalls Vincent Kenis, producer with the Belgium-based label Crammed Discs. “It took me 20 years to find them!” Kenis persuaded Konono’s late founder Mingiedi Mawangu to form a new ensemble. “At the beginning, it was artificial. I’d say, ‘Can you play with that person?’ They’d say, ‘No.’ I’d say, ‘Try it anyway.’ And it worked.”