Staff Benda Bilili's Stripped-Down Tunes Fight Polio, Violence

This blog entry describes a music band whose members are polio-stricken African musicians living outdoors, riding motorbikes, and singing songs about polio immunisation. Congolese band Staff Benda Bilili (SBB) also works to dissuade street kids from violence, sometimes by putting them in the band. SBB's newest member is a 17-year-old guitarist who plays a single-string electric lute he built out of a tin can.

The band's music, designed to raise awareness about polio and to stimulate hope in the face of the relentless violence that afflicts the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), may be heard on its debut album (available March 2009), as well as through various internet postings - such as the band's Myspace page and the YouTube videos viewable here. SBB is also the subject of an upcoming feature-length documentary from French directors Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye, who plan to document the band's forthcoming European shows.