The Brooklyn Rail

One of the great recurring musical events in New York is the long-running Wednesday night residency by the Mandingo Ambassadors at Barbès. The band is led by guitarist Mamady Kouyaté, and performs a swirling, pattern-rich style of music from the West African country of Guinea. Kouyaté, who comes from a long line of griots, has spent decades playing the music that arose from the Authenticité policy begun in the 1960s. This was created under President Sékou Touré as a way of fostering an authentic national sound rooted in traditional rhythms but also incorporating outside styles like jazz, funk, and Afro-Cuban music. As with so many African musicians, political circumstances drove Kouyaté from his homeland, and he wound up based in New York. Those weekly gigs at Barbès keep this finely spun music alive in America, and bring new audiences to discover this beautifully burnished ensemble.

Part of the appeal of these larger groups is the intricacy of their music, the way themes are picked up, repeated, and varied across the ensemble, creating a hypnotic, almost tidal pull. Whether in large, heaving outfits, like Nigeria’s legendary Fela Kuti and the Africa ’70, or swaying, romantically inclined groups like Senegal’s Orchestra Baobab, the effect can be enveloping. But despite their obvious appeal to listeners, these large bands are a major challenge to keep together. Especially in an era when touring has become one of the only ways for a band to make money, it’s difficult to keep all the components of an ensemble working together—something that makes the long tenure of the Mandingo Ambassadors even more impressive, and clearly a labor of love.

It was surprising and heartening, then, to learn of guitarist Julian Apter’s devotion to Congolese music, and his role in helping to create a new large ensemble called Orchestre Moto. The group has come together in the last few years to play this rumba-driven music. His goal is to give it a platform in the United States that can complement its popularity as party music in much of Africa and across Europe. “Congolese music is popular from Johannesburg to Berlin to Cairo. It just needs a home here,” he said.

Raised in Los Angeles, Apter was exposed to lots of different types of music by parents who worked as professors at UCLA, teaching aspects of African diasporic history. Apter studied Congolese music with guitarist Solo De Kanto, then wound up joining with him to form Orchestre Moto.

I met with Apter at an exhibition at James Cohan in Tribeca, which was featuring the Ethiopian artist Elias Sime. Even though Kinshasa and Addis Ababa are far apart, I thought a visit to the show might spark a conversation, and it did. Looking at the repurposed circuit boards and looping plastic wires employed by the artist, Apter thought of some of the cities he visited in Africa, where there are a number of makeshift houses and a landscape defined in part by corrugated metal. This makes for a complex interplay between the manufactured and the organic. “And it’s chaotic, but it works! At the same time, I recognize those earth tones, that brown and deep green. And sometimes in a place like Senegal, the earth is red.” Leaving the gallery, Apter pointed to the Amharic script on the wall used to translate the title of the Sime show. Its flowing line revealed a totally different sensibility, and consequently a different form of knowledge.

Over the last decade, Apter has continued traveling and studying, deepening his connection to this lilting, flowing music. “I threw myself into the universe of African music,” he says. He played for five years with Nkumu Katalay before devoting himself to getting Orchestre Moto off the ground. The band has played shows at the Sultan Room in Bushwick and the Shrine in Harlem, among other spots, and has ambitiously launched New York and West Coast editions of the band. As if that weren’t enough, Apter formed a not-for-profit called Congo Culture Connection, to support the musicians who were the living bridge for this music. He is seeking amity between the Anglophone and Francophone worlds, something that is sorely needed and might plausibly occur through music. But he acknowledged the tough realities of keeping a large band together, rehearsing, recording, and moving forward. It takes incredible fortitude on behalf of the musicians, who may be struggling just to get by in America. On top of that are deportation fears, which can fracture communities. But when they’re called upon for a gig, the band does whatever it takes to make it happen. “Everyone gives one thousand percent,” says Apter. It’s a career and a calling.

Apter has immersed himself in the study of African popular music, from ’50s bands like African Fiesta and TPOK Jazz to ’60s–’70s guitar bands like Lipua Lipua. He came under the spell of Werrason, an influential Congolese singer-songwriter—“He is kind of like Miles Davis, a real institution”—as well as JB Mpiana. He also shows love for the occasional African club banger, like “Premier Gaou” by Ivorian group Magic System, about which one commentator said, “If you go to an African party and they don’t play this song, go home! Just take your jollof and go home!”

In the midst of the frightening politics of the current administration, Apter maintains a hopeful outlook, and his love for African music shines through. He has devoted himself to enlarging the community for Congolese music in a meaningful way. Though he acknowledged the importance of a local world music icon like Papa Wemba, his tack and that of the band has been to take the sound back to the roots. He talked about the appeal of a large ensemble: “In the live band culture of the Congo, which I love, they would stage these spectacular shows, just adding on dancers and more musicians." Yet no matter how dazzling the ensemble—the passionate, keening vocals, the interlocking guitars and percussion—there is always a countervailing restraint in the music. Best of all is its slinky, endlessly propelled groove, which unites all.

New York has significant African populations in the Bronx, Central Brooklyn, and in Harlem. That contributes to the city being a hub for African music. For years, Paris dominated the Western scene, understandably, for Francophone African musicians. Now it is spreading out, with Apter finding superb expatriate musicians in Los Angeles for the branch there; they are led by the great guitarist Huit Kilos, formerly of the band for the extraordinary Congolese singer Tabu Ley Rochereau. At the same time, there is apprehension in local immigrant communities: how long before US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) targets them? According to recent statements by Tom Homan, the Trump-designated “border czar,” the deaths, arrests, and chaos in Minnesota were just the beginning. After all, our President hasn’t been shy in expressing his view of these countries, recently describing Somalia as “filthy, dirty, disgusting, ridden with crime." These openly racist remarks were met with outrage, but Trump paid no penalty. Maybe such abject disdain can only be met with disdain of its own. The best revenge is playing well.