Fulu Miziki: The band leading a recycling art movement in Kinshasa
When pioneering American Afrofuturist musicians like Sun Ra and Parliament Funkadelic were looking to reconnect with their ancestral roots, they sometimes needed a spaceship, literally or metaphorically, to get them there.
The performers in Fulu Miziki, by comparison, don’t have a geographical disconnect from Africa or any sci-fi explanations for their elaborate costumes; in fact, this group, based out of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, were born out of the land rather than the stars.
The name Fulu Miziki translates loosely to ‘music from garbage’ in the Lingala language, and that’s certainly the first thing most people will notice about this six-person collective, who individually use the names Sekembele, Deboule, Tche Tche, Abbe La Roche, Le Meilleur, and Padou. Rather than touring with Fender guitars and Ludwig drum kits, all of their instruments are hand-made from materials plucked out of rubbish dumps in Kinshasa. It’s not a gimmick, as the Congo has long been one of the most plundered regions on Earth, and its riches have fed the economies of other nations for centuries, who then return to the same land to toss away the garbage left from those original materials.
Fulu Miziki’s music is certainly built around drawing attention to this history; the band, which formed in 2016, has toured Europe in recent years and raised awareness about the ongoing exploitation of the continent as a trash receptacle and the worldwide environmental consequences thereof. But the instruments and outfits they’ve created from the tossed-away items in their hometown aren’t meant to be horrific or disturbing reflections of that reality; quite the contrary, in fact. These musicians are in the business of solving problems, and they dress like superheroes accordingly.
“In nature, there is no trash because life reuses everything,” Fulu Miziki percussionist Sekelembele told The Guardian in 2022, “Trash is toxic if it has no other use, so we give a second life to what we pick up”.
Fulu Miziki’s music isn’t heavy or dreary either, as sonically and stylistically, they’re tapping into a long-held street performer tradition in their homeland, an emphasis on ‘recovery art’ that was re-invigorated in the 2000s by the rapper and visual artist Bebson de la rue. The goal, as Bebson explained it, was to “recover objects from life to create an original soundtrack of the city”, and Fulu Miziki are carrying on this DIY spirit.
Kinshasa is a massive city, twice the population of London, so there is never a shortage of old materials to put to new use: pipes, hoses, broken electronics, kitchen utensils, tin cans, tyres, and the like. Fulu Miziki don’t really subscribe to the term ‘upcycle’, the trendy Western phrase for junk revival; it’s too baked into their philosophy to be viewed as a cute artisan hobby.
The group’s incredible costumes are reminiscent not only of Funkadelic’s space-chic over the topness, but also of the survivalist gear of the characters of Mad Max and the Toxic Avenger, two heroes who similarly made the most of a bad situation, becoming both the embodiment of their origins and a leading force for changing it.
“We hope our collective can put a spotlight on this pollution problem in Kinshasa and other parts of Africa,” Sekelembele said, “This problem is a global one. And if Africa is the dumpster of the entire world, it is already facing difficulties that everywhere else will face very soon.”
