Baloji takes hip-hop attitude to Congo

Congolese rapper Baloji. Photograph: Baloji

Baloji, the brilliant and innovative Congolese-born Belgian rapper and video producer, spoke to Addis Rumble about his recent performances in Kinshasa, recording with Konono No 1, the distinct visual side of his work and how to escape the 'African artist' label.

What is your tactic when integrating Congolese sounds with rap and hip-hop?

I've been listening to hip-hop since 1995-1996. It's the music I grew up with. It was through listening to hip-hop that I learned about Curtis Mayfield and Fela Kuti and also Mulatu Astatke. Now Congolese music is really diverse but I'm trying to bring a hip-hop attitude to it.

A lot of traditional Congolese music is based on improvisation and in Ethiopia we have the same tradition through the Azmari singers. How do you see the relationship between this tradition of improvisation and then hip-hop?

I think that it is connected, most music is. It is only when people give it names, that we see the differences. For me the music of Konono is close to Animal Collective. This doesn't sound obvious in a commercial way but musically the way it's based on trance and vibrations is the same. This is also true for rap and for the griot culture.

What was your experience collaborating with Konono in the recording of your new album, Kinshasa Succursale (released on Crammed in March)?

I learned a lot of things. I learned that some musicians don't give a fuck about the metronome. They just play. In Europe we try to make sure the rhythm is the same until the end of the song. They don't care and they don't think too much about the music. In Europe people think so much about what it means, how it's build up, the themes, the melodies, the harmonies. I think it's because of the Mozart tradition. It's not because Konono don't have harmonies or themes. It's just that it doesn't have a prescription. It's free.

Karibu ya Bintou on Vimeo

How was it for you to perform in Congo?

I just played there again two weeks ago and it was really great. I played in a venue called 'the Zoo.' I was really happy with this concert because the Kinshasa audience is really difficult. They are so proud of who they are and what they are doing. It's a bit like Cuba. They have their musical identity and nothing can change it.

Do you adjust your performance to your audiences?

No. A couple of years ago I did but now it is more like 'take it or leave it.' My inspiration is from Congo but also from Europe and I don't want to adjust or find excuses for not living there. My music is different because I am an outsider living in Europe. Congo is a country where there is no real music industry. Many people have been listening to the same music for the past 25 years. For musicians like Jupiter or Konono it's really difficult to get an audience in Kinshasa. Congolese are not really progressive. They are quite conservative. It's the culture and the way people listen to music.

The visual side of your work is very distinct and also quite similar to the work of old Congolese photographers like Jean Depara. Why did you choose this visual appearance?

Actually, the visuals are the reason people picked up my work. But I'm not sure they get the message. What I like about this period of time in the 50s is that you had a lot of Congolese trying to look European and they called themselves 'the evolved'. They dressed up and tried to look like the Belgian kings. There is something really interesting in that attitude. I like the fact that they care about elegance. For me the main idea behind these visuals is pretending to be 'evolved'. But it's all fake because your colour is going to bring you down anyway. But people don't really get it. Now the hairstyle is becoming stylish and I see a lot of people copying the whole thing. It's not just about having an African backdrop behind you. It's deeper than that.

So what is the real thing then?

The fascination and frustration among many African intellectuals at that time trying to look European, trying to copy the way the Europeans did politics or social life. That to me is very interesting. I'm really fascinated by it and not just because they wore some high-fashion clothes.

So for you it's much more than just visuals?

Yes, it's about playing with perceptions and giving codes new meanings. For example the song Independance Cha-Cha (from Kinshasa Succursale) is about something different than the original version. It's basically the first commercial song made in Congo in 1959. It's really a silly and hypocritical song and it's nice to play with these codes. Because the perception of people is that it's a dance song, it's cha-cha, but in the end it's just empty.

Le Jour d'apres / Siku ya baadaye (Independence cha-cha) on Vimeo

You were struggling a lot to secure the release of Kinshasa Succursale. Now that you have a platform and support, what ideas do you want to realise?

I have a new album in the can. I have an EP that I hope to put out soon with a lot of collaborations with African artists. I'm working on a film that I hope to shoot next year. And I have this crazy band (the Katuba Orchestra) that has followed me in the past two years on this amazing journey in realizing this album that nobody wanted.

Finally, does it bother you being perceived now mainly as an African artist, not just an artist?

I'm an artist first, not an African artist. This is really difficult. You have to do something else, something non-African to not always being perceived as an African artist and always being put in the same box.

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London jazz festival 2012: big bands blow the away the competition

Big talent … Kenny Wheeler at London jazz festival 2012. Photograph: Redferns via Getty Images

Featuring more than 250 gigs, the London jazz festival 2012 brought musical thrills to packed halls, foyers and free stages at the Southbank and Barbican. And the LJF buzz spreading out to the city's small clubs and pubs confirmed that this eclectic event continues to provide a fillip to jazz at all levels.

At the grassroots end, I saw a lively post-bop set – but one open enough to include Fats Waller's Jitterbug Waltz – led by the young London saxophonist/composer George Crowley at the Oxford Arms in Kentish Town last week. The band included former Loose Tubes trumpeter Chris Batchelor, Empirical bassist Tom Farmer, and London-based American drummer Jeff Williams, and it was a typical LJF scenario in that I was on the way home from a gig that could hardly have been more different – harpist Iro Haarla, saxophonist Trygve Seim and vocalist Norma Winstone at St James's Church in Piccadilly.

New music from around Europe was a key theme this year, as seen in the Take Five Europe project from LJF producers Serious. The initiative – for a bespoke band formed from workshop encounters between 10 young European performer/composers – showed just how much important background work on jazz-nurturing goes on all year round. Take Five Europe explored free improv, Scottish folk music (from saxophonist/bagpiper Fraser Fifield), the art of making a bulky baritone-sax sound vivacious (as demonstrated by Celine Bonacina) and a lot more from its French, Dutch, Norwegian, British and Polish lineup.

There was a time when jazz big-bands were proclaimed to be dead. But there were plenty of large ensembles at this year's LJF to blow that theory away. Performances by Guy Barker's mammoth Jazz Voice band, Manchester's Beats and Pieces, the National Youth Jazz Orchestra, the Australian Art Orchestra, and the BBC Concert Orchestra with reeds player Shabaka Hutchings, confirmed the enduring significance of big-ensemble jazz. These outfits packed with conservatoire students also made vital contributions this year, as the Trinity Laban jazz students did on their lively Gil Evans tribute under the direction of Polar Bear's Mark Lockheart, and as the dynamically funky pianist Neil Cowley found with the sound of the Guildhall's Big Strings group swelling around him. The Royal Academy of Music's big band also showed the class of the emerging jazz generation last Saturday in its sophisticated interpretations of Kenny Wheeler's lesser-known works.

Other exciting and original big bands included Sid Peacock's Surge – a midlands outfit influenced by Belfast's Brian Irvine and by Django Bates – which played a structurally adventurous music of real independence, even if a noisy Friday night Barbican free stage obscured its subtleties, and the improvised solos might have been better integrated. The next afternoon in the same location, jazz, reggae and dubstep drummer/composer Tommy Evans, also showed why he won a Basca British Composer award last year, with a genre-bending mix of tightly organised ensemble-playing, free-spirited jazz improv – notably for his sax players and tempestuous Leeds bassist Dave Kane – and imaginative use of three singers.

Imaginative use of singers was also a characteristic of the festival, in saxophonist John Surman's choral piece Lifelines, commissioned by the 2012 Huddersfield contemporary music festival for him, pianist Howard Moody and the Bolsterstone Male Voice Choir. It was probably Surman's purest expression of his love of English choral music, and how the hip jazz gracefulness of his soprano and baritone sax lines could productively blend with massed voices – even if a line like "pop your nose in a jug of this", from a traditional west country drinking song, might be unlikely to make it on to one of Surman's recordings for the rather more astringent ECM label, unless maybe sung in Latin.

Pianists also provided plenty of enduring memories from the festival. Tigran Hamasyan and the Cuban Aruan Ortiz – the latter in the group he co-leads with London bassist Michael Janisch – were vivid presences on the BBC's Jazz Lineup recording at the Southbank's Clore Ballroom on the first weekend. Neil Cowley brought the house down for a rock and funk-inclined audience at the Barbican, but if he isn't a Keith Jarrett or Brad Mehldau, his chord-thundering pop-jazz gives his listeners the uplifting sense of witnessing musicians having the time of their lives, and he has a knack for catchy tunes, too. At the other end of the scale, former Wynton Marsalis pianist Marcus Roberts (who played a three-day residency at Kings Place, some of it with the Guildhall School's students) sounded almost flawless, and his torrential eloquence was dazzling, even if he did make Thelonious Monk's flinty pieces sound more graceful than some fans might consider necessary.

Last but not least, a joke recounted by Jazzwise magazine's Jon Newey, in a speech to mark the 10th birthday of the magazine's venture The Write Stuff – a mentoring scheme for would-be jazz journalists. "What's the difference between a jazz journalist and a pizza?" Newey asked. The answer? "A pizza can feed a family of four."

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