"Welcome to the desert of the real," says Morpheus as Neo awakens in a postapocalyptic landscape in "The Matrix." But he could just as well be describing the state of music nowadays. The "real" in music has indeed become like a desert, depopulated and featureless as far as the eye can see.
So many bands and artists these days are manufactured to meet demographic needs, such as The Jonas Brothers and SMAP, or embrace theatrical artifice, like Lady Gaga or Ayumi Hamasaki. It all exists in the plastic bubble known as "entertainment," and little makes it through that retains the pungent bite of real, lived experience.
Despite the pleasures of glittery, pitch-corrected materialist pop, there will always be a hunger for the real in music. Thus it's no surprise to witness the rise of Congolese band Staff Benda Bilili, who represent a triumph of music that's intensely rooted in the specifics of time, place and experience. Coming from the streets of Kinshasa, four of its members are paraplegic from childhood polio, another two are street kids who were sleeping on cardboard. This is a band for whom "no future" was not a provocative slogan but a very possible outcome, yet who choose to keep believing in themselves and their music. It paid off, both for them — success — and for those of us who now have the pleasure of hearing them.