My Instrument: Fulu Miziki and their ‘garbage music’

Kinshasa has accustomed us to the surreal and fantastic, with the likes of Staff Benda Bilili, Jupiter & Okwess and Konono No 1, but Fulu Miziki (literally meaning ‘Garbage Music’ in Lingala) take this to another level. The band’s instruments are concocted from discarded material recuperated in the detritus of the Congolese capital or the cities in which the band performs. These musical inventions range from the sékébien (drum set), moulded from abandoned oil canisters, to the kanieba (several PVC tubes tied to a piece of wood and beaten skilfully with the soles of discarded flip-flops). 

One of the kanieba’s leading practitioners, Deboul, is part of the sextet, in French exile since 2019. “We come from one of Kinshasa’s most polluted neighbourhoods, Ngwaka, where the population is literally being buried by garbage,” says the musician who cut his teeth professionally as a singer with one of the country’s best-known rappers, Bebson de la Rue. Accompanied by bass player Padou and multi-instrumentalist Laroche, Deboul describes the evolution of the band’s instruments from their temporary base in Marseille. “Wherever we go, we hunt for material in the garbage. Then, it’s a slow process of sifting, assembling and finding the right tonality. It’s an instinctive exploration, through trial-and-error, but we draw on our long experience as professional musicians.”

Some people date the beginning of these explorations to 2003, when Kinshasa musician Pisko Crane began rummaging in the mountains of Ngwaka street rubbish, situated a stone’s throw from the city zoo and the huge Zando market. Pisko lives in a city whose population of 16 million produces 10,000 metric tons of rubbish a day. He, his wife Lady Aïcha, Deboul, Padou, La Roche, Le Meilleur, Sekelembele and Tche Tche went on to create a project labelled Eco-Friendly-Afro-Futuristic, condensed to Fulu Miziki. 

But Padou insists it was an intense workshop with Belgian filmmaker Renaud Barret in 2016 that catalysed the creation of their best instruments: “Renaud knows all about how we’re creating art out of trash and has filmed the gritty street landscape of Ngwaka for years. He organised the workshop to reflect the fact that we can’t afford to buy or rent instruments, or electrify them. Furthermore, the competition between traditional musicians in Kinshasa is ferocious. So, during the training, we asked ourselves: ‘Why not just invent them?’” La Roche adds, “once we were happy with the result, we adapted the new sounds to the soukous, techno, zouk, funk, ragga and reggae music we’ve always been playing. But these instruments create new sonorities, which are unique: when you beat a rhythm on a drum made from a bicycle’s blown-up inner tube – that’s our tchembou – there’s no sound quite like it. Basically, we’ve invented the fulu style, and have over 30 compositions, ready to be recorded.” In parallel, the group is refashioning their society’s garbage into dress and scenic attire, making for compelling visual sets which they hope to take to the UK and the US in the coming year.

The sékébien, milofo, ouragan (steel gong), pala fulu (a pulley), noblé (glass percussion), nkamoua (box guitar, literally translating as ‘a miracle’ in Lingala) etc, are in constant evolution and readjusted before just about every concert. “We took a couple of days to explore the local rubbish here in Europe before our concerts in Scandinavia and southern France, for example. But, to be honest, no material is quite as ‘musical’ and rich as what we find back home,” says Deboul, who hopes to return to his homeland at the end of next year. There, the band is likely to cross paths with co-founders Pisko and Lady Aïcha, who have branched out on their own these past two years. “But there are several other fulu bands in Kinshasa nowadays,” insists Deboul. “The youth have really taken to combining art and trash. There’s even a group of nine to 12-year-olds who’ve given themselves the name Ibo Mamingi, which means ‘Very, Very Crazy’ in Lingala. Their instruments are taking the music to another level.” 

What Deboul and his fellow musicians are hoping to perpetuate is an engagement towards a less toxic atmosphere in Kinshasa. “The Congolese are being poisoned by all this rubbish,” says Padou. “Our songs aim at shaking up the authorities, calling on them to clean up our streets, for the sake of future generations.”   

​This article originally appeared in the August/September 2022 issue of Songlines magazine. Never miss an issue – subscribe today