Showing posts with label Benda Bilili. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Benda Bilili. Show all posts

Friday, 1 June 2012

Benda Bilili!

Benda Bilili! Is a 2010 documentary about a group of disabled musicians from Kinshasa, Congo who use rudimentary and hand made instruments to produce wonderful rumba and reggae music. The band are followed from 2004 to 2010 by French film makers Renaud Barret and Florent de La Tullaye as they progress from living on the streets and practicing at the city’s zoo to recording an album and touring Europe. The film focuses on the struggles of the various members and those around them and upon their influence in the city and especially on the young street kids who follow and assist them.
 
The band use strange hand peddled tricycles to get about as most of the members suffer from Polio and are unable to walk. Their songs are about their lives on the streets from being laughed at for being handicapped to songs about sleeping on cardboard. Bad things keep coming at the various members but they never let it get them down and remain focused on making a better life for themselves and their families. In one scene, the leader of the band Staff Benda Bilili a street papa called Ricky Lickabu receives a call to say that the shack that he has been staying at has been burned down. He simply turns to the camera and says “these things happen in life”. He is later seen sleeping on the street with his wife and four children.