Staff Benda Bilili, The Union Chapel, London
- Written by Alex Kavanagh
Walking into the Union Chapel for a gig feels a little strange. It's a beautiful setting; a Gothic church built in the late 19th century, which hosts concerts and comedy events as well as Sunday prayers, and was voted London's Best Live Music Venue by readers of Time Out magazine in 2012. But the echoey acoustics, high vaulted ceilings and ornate bas-reliefs invoke the feelings of somewhere you sit and behave rather than a place to jump aroundand make noise.
The challenge of the performer then, is to break down the barriers of a place associated with worship, and turn it into a music venue. Staff Benda Bilili were well-placed to do it - primarily a funk band rooted in rumba, or soukous, they incorporate reggae and traditional R&B into their music and have two excellent albums to their name: 2009's Tres Tres Fort and 2012's Bouger Le Monde. A ten-strong band of all ages, it's almost impossible to sit still when they're in full swing.
When the group come onstage they have their work cut out. The diverse, all-seater crowd welcomes them with a modest cheer and watches intently as the group set up in silence. Someone in the back row drops a pin. They start hard, opening with a high tempo and by the second song they have everybody on their feet and dancing in the aisles. There was something of the gospel revivalist fervour about it as one by one the entire house stands and moves involuntarily to the beat. Benda Bilili, who starts the show looking a little disinterested, soon wore wide smiles and feeds from the appreciation of the audience, injecting their performance with more and more energy. By the end of their set (70 or 80 minutes that felt more like half an hour) the crowd are sweaty and euphoric, pockets of people making little dance-parties of their own in the spaces between the pews. The musicians leave to the rapturous applause of a full house and they look like they've enjoyed it just as much as we had.
Catch them live if you can, and if you haven't seen it already then hunt down and watch the documentary that charts their rise to fame from the slums of Kinshasa to world tours and international adoration. It's a brilliant film and after watching it, it's hard not to see them as anything other than inspirational.