Zürcher Theater Spektakel

Staff Benda Bilili plays this wonderful Central African music, full of scintillating guitar melodies and polyphonic singing. To our ears, it’s a mix of blues, soul, reggae and soukous – the Congolese version of rumba. Their music overflows with a contagious joie de vivre making one almost forget that the members of this band live in one of the poorest countries in the world, struggling to get by with the odd job here and there – and that five of the eight musicians are physically handicapped due to polio. Since the making of a film of the same name, which documented the life of this band in the ravaged and perilous streets of Kinshasa, Staff Benda Bilili have also become known in Europe. This year they are opening the festival with a musical feast. (ron)