Hotel Univers (2013)
12 tracks, 43 minutes
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Jupiter & Okwess International (or Jupiter / Okwess as they have recently styled themselves) are an interesting ensemble. The eponymous Jupiter is Jupiter Bokondji, one of the most commanding frontmen I’ve ever seen. He’s incredibly striking: very tall, skinny and serious. Proper commanding, like. As the band’s name would imply, he is absolutely integral to the music and without him the band would be completely different. However, his impact on the sound-making of the group is surprisingly small. Sometimes he sing-talks his way through a song in his rich and rumbling bass voice, sometimes he plays traditional conga-like drums, but his main role is to be more of a presence. Just by being there he dictates the whole mood of the show, providing an incredibly valuable anchor from which the rest of the band can spiral high and wild with the reassurance that Jupiter is always there to bring things back to Earth at exactly the correct moments.
That’s the case for his live shows and his early recordings made in Kinshasa, at least. It’s slightly different on this record, Hotel Univers, his first ‘official’ and worldwide release. They get Jupiter upfront on most songs, which doesn’t necessarily take anything away at all, but it’s the music that will get you. Together, Jupiter & Okwess International create a really potent brew that comes from the evolutionary chain from Congolese rumba and soukous, but where those styles are bright and shiny, this music is dark. Not to say it is any less danceable, of course – it will have you up and moving and sweating until you’ve got nothing left, and then they’ll carry on. Into their mix they bring rock, funk and reggae, but what I think is most important is that even with this album, recorded in a proper studio, produced to Western tastes and with nice equipment, they still embody the sound of the streets of Kinshasa.
For more than 20 years, Jupiter & Okwess International played regularly around the Congolese capital, and this music is a fermentation of all of those performances. Their sound is soaked in the melodies of patched-up, hand-me-down and even homemade instruments, in improvised stages and in power-cuts, in political rallies and protests and in street kids spreading the word about their upcoming gigs. Their drummer’s rhythms were honed on a suitcase for a kick drum, a cowbell for a high-hat and a bushel of dried grass for a snare. Their music courses with deep influences from every single ethnic group that makes a home in that incredibly cosmopolitan city. Jupiter and his crew make music that is caked in the dust of the Kinshasa streets and is so much more powerful for that.
Hotel Univers is a great album that will give you a taste of what this band is all about, but there is no way it can compare to the intensity of a live show with its darkly heady music from Okwess International and overseen by the stern gaze of Jupiter himself. It’s then that they can fully take you on a journey to the beating heart of Kinshasa for just the wildest party you can imagine.
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