DJ Fantôme is an enigmatic figure on Kinshasa’s electronic music scene. Based in the heart of the Zando market, he has spent over a decade crafting a ghetto techno sound infused with coupé-décalé, kuduro, and trance, drawing directly from the city’s chaotic sonic pulse.

Between 2020 and 2021, he set up an improvised studio right in the middle of Zando, the center of the Congolese capital. From this immersion emerged Zando Beat, a raw and hypnotic project recorded with gang members and other local street voices. Chosen for the power of their voices and their lived experience, they deliver shouted choruses and gritty narratives over frenzied rhythms. Locally, this sound is called the Zagué, a music of urgency, a survival rhythm born in the arteries of the market.

Masked and cloaked in black, DJ Fantôme turns his performances into electronic rituals, where the party becomes a documentary and the dance floor an outlet. Between oral tradition and electronic mutation, he channels the raw energy of Kinshasa into a fully immersive experience. With Zando Beat, he delivers a project that is both intensely local and universally compelling, a hypnotic celebration and sonic testimony of the city and its people.