Staff Benda Bilili - The masters of survival, the sound of the ghetto

Djunana's smile is pure Ray Charles, blissful and bright. He's busy cutting a rocking rumba rug on the dirty concrete stage of L'Oeil Du Plaisir, a roughneck dance bar in the heart of the Congolese capital Kinshasa. Since he has no legs, or rather, only short floppy polio-ravaged stumps, it seems as if he's buried waist downwards, with only the upper half of his extraordinary frame visible while the rest boogies in the maw of the earth. Every part of his body is beaming, every sinew dances. I stare at him impolitely, and inside a confused voice is asking: "What has he got to feel so happy about?"

I imagine that most of the party of musicians and adventurers who have arrived with me in this beer-crate and sawdust joint on a voyage of musical discovery organised by Africa Express are asking themselves the same question. After all, finding the appropriate rank in the global hierarchy of suffering for a disabled musician who lives rough on the streets of Africa's most deranged and dysfunctional megalopolis seems like a no-brainer. Or is it?

Click here to listen to Staff Benda Bilili's track 'Polio'

Then Amadou Bagayoko, one half of the Malian duo Amadou and Mariam, gets up on stage to inject some sharp and slithering guitar licks into the rippling song. Damon Albarn adds his melodica to the mix. Sam Duckworth's grin is broader than Broadway. The rappers from De la Soul look entranced. This is no time to get all morose and philosophical, but if the beer weren't so sharp and cold, the music so warm and honeyed and the whores so statuesque and impossibly graceful, the temptation to slip into a bout of soul-searching would be overwhelming.

Sharing the stage with Djunana are four other disabled musicians, an able-bodied bassist and a young B-boy dressed in hip-hop baggies who is playing his satongé like a panhandling Paganini.

I later learn that this lean, gentle-looking kid, who goes by the name of Roger Landu, invented the instrument he's playing with such dazzling virtuosity. The raw materials of the satongé consist of a milk-powder tin, a section of fish basket frame and a single electrical wire. A few days later, at our hotel, Roger makes up santongés to order and sells them to us for $20 (£14) a pop... good business for a shégué, or homeless kid, who was surviving by busking for pennies in the Kinshasa central market.

Roger's resourcefulness makes him a model citizen, a fine practitioner of the infamous Article 15 of the Congolese constitution, which exhorts all true patriots to find a way to cope and survive by fair means or foul. The French have a fine verb for it... "se debrouiller".

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, a country that has been raped and abused by men in power, foreign and native, for more than a century, you either embrace Article 15 or die. Most residents of Kinshasa wake up in the morning with one goal in their heads: to find something to eat and make it through the day with wit, courage and cunning. Tomorrow doesn't even trouble their minds. Today and the next meal are all that count. Self-pity is suicidal.

The band who are weaving spells about our ears with their dulcet rolling rumba and keening vocals are the unrecognised geniuses of Article 15, the masters of survival. They call themselves Staff Benda Bilili, which, in Lingala, the lingua franca of this vast and variegated country, means something like "the people who see beyond..." Beyond prejudice, corruption, the lies of priests and politicians, the grimy veneer of daily life.

Lounging after the show on his extraordinary moped wheelchair contraption, Coco Ngambali, the group's primary songwriter, explains; "We see ourselves as journalists. We're the real journalists because we're not afraid of anyone. We communicate messages to mothers, to those who sleep on the streets on cardboard boxes, to the shégués." Coco's face is like a granite boulder bathed in soft evening light, an astonishing mixture of gentle wisdom and rawhide toughness. As well as being a gifted composer, he's reportedly a champion arm-wrestler.

Click here to listen to Staff Benda Bilili's track 'Moziki'

But let's go back a way. The story starts with a microscopic organism that wheedles its away into the gastrointestinal tract and then the central nervous system. Before the mutilations of recent wars in eastern Congo added to the demographic, the poliomyelitis virus accounted for most serious disabilities in Kinshasa. The victims were often abandoned by their parents, first to various struggling religious institutions and then to the streets. The handicapped are also deemed to have demonic powers, and therefore find themselves ostracised by a fearful able-bodied society. But the hapless legion of Kinshasa's polio victims have developed extraordinary survival strategies.

One of these strategies is to form gangs, which roam the streets in bizarre gizmoidal wheelchairs, extorting protection money from shopkeepers. Another is to take advantage of one of ex-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko's more benign statutes exempting the disabled from paying taxes on the ferries which steam across the vast Congo river, linking Kinshasa with Brazzaville, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo, on the opposite shore. Wheelchairs piled high with cigarettes, alcohol, petrol, rice and all types of stock both straight and crooked are heaved by armies of young street kids up the ferry ramps and on to the waiting boats. Various "associations" of disabled traders dominate the commerce of Ngobila Beach, the ferry port on the Kinshasa side. Thirty years ago, it was here that Coco met Ricky Likabu, or "Papa Ricky" as he's known to the shégués of Kinshasa's downtown.

Ricky is the backbone of Staff Benda Bilili, the group's strategist, disciplinarian and motivator, a man of many talents and a benign arbitrator of petit disputes. Most days he hangs out with the rest of the group at the Sonas opposite the UN building, busking, holding court, surveying the toxic frenzy of Kinshasa's street life.

Coco and Ricky used to be members of Raka Raka, one of the many backing combos of the renowned Papa Wemba. But when Wemba was incarcerated in France for visa and immigration fraud, the pair decided to set up on their own. At the time, they were living in a refuge for the disabled. In 2004, a pair of French film-makers, Renaud Barret and Florent de la Tullaye, happened on the group as they were busking. It was the genesis of an intense creative relationship.

Barret and De la Tullaye started filming the group, and recording them at the studios of the Congolese Radio and TV. In 2006, they delegated the recording part of the project to the Belgian producer Vincent Kenis, the man behind Konono No. 1, Kasai All Stars and the Congotronics compilations. The first Staff Benda Bilili CD, entitled Très Très Fort, is out on Crammed Discs in March.

It's clear from a peek at the rushes of Barrett and De la Tullaye's film that Coco, Ricky and their entire extended family place great store on the world release of their CD to provide the finance needed to realise their dreams. Ricky talks of opening a centre for the disabled and homeless people of Kinshasa. He also dreams of touring Africa with Staff Benda Bilili, spreading the message of communal resilience and self-help.

Whether the crisis-riddled music industry in the West is capable of fulfilling these hopes is unclear. Staff Benda Bilili's music has no need of sentimental crutches. It stands proudly on its own formidable limbs, mixing 70s funk, old Cuban son and mambo with the mellifluous flow of classic Congolese rumba, evoking the golden age of Franco and Tabu Ley Rochereau. The musicianship is subtle and precise, forged by the group's extraordinary work ethic, and their sound has a raw simplicity and uniqueness, thanks partly to Soklo, Kinshasa's most famous guitar maker, who supplies most of the city's street musicians. Roger's wonderful satongé solos provide icings on this well-apportioned cake.

Filming in the city has required huge amounts of courage and sangfroid, but like most people who have spent time with Staff Benda Bilili, Florent is in awe of their mental strength and toughness.

Watch the video for Na Lingui Yo by Staff Benda Bilili

"They're obstinate and courageous, they're survivors," he says.. "And they're very generous. They've taught the street children an enormous amount. Everybody is in the same misery in Kinshasa but you get the impression that the handicapped cope better than the able-bodied. They often say, "A handicap is in the mind, not in the legs."

The fascinating tale of Staff Benda Bilili is about to enter a new "international" phase. A summer tour of Europe and the UK to coincide with the release of Très Très Fort is in its planning stages, but 400,000 people have already viewed the brief snippets of film about the band on YouTube. It seems that an altogether more congenial and auspicious viral chain reaction than the one that robbed them of their limbs all those years ago has already been unleashed.

On the last day of our brief Africa Express visit to Kinshasa, some of us go down to the zoo to see the group. 3D from Massive Attack foregoes a trip to the crafts market to join us. The sounds of rehearsal drift our way. Ricky and Coco greet us with friendly smiles. We express our hope to see the group in England; a hope which may finally be on the verge of reality. Then after one last song we take our leave of Staff Benda Bilili and their world, where the battle against misery produces traits and values capable of making a pampered, sheltered Westerner feel jealous.

That's where all those endlessly predictable images of poverty and disease that dominate the Western media's coverage of Africa are so aberrant. Africa doesn't need our pity. Africa demands and deserves our admiration and wonder, our humility and respect. Staff Benda Bilili embody this truth with total dedication and style.

'Très Très Fort' is out on Crammed Discs on 23 March. Videos of the band can be seen on YouTube