Tradi-moderne congolais

Tradi-moderne congolais is the Congolese practice of performing traditional regional musics on amplified, often homemade electric instruments, developed in Kinshasa and the Kasai region from the 1970s. Ensembles build hypnotic, extended grooves from interlocking likembe (thumb piano) patterns, percussion and call-and-response singing, run through makeshift amplification whose distortion became an aesthetic signature. The best-known exponents, *Konono Nº1* and the *Kasai Allstars* collective, reached international audiences in the 2000s through the #Congotronics# series of #Crammed Discs#, which presented the style as a parallel, indigenous form of electronic dance music.