Angola rarely figures in discussions of African music. Yet this has less to do with the country’s musical prowess than the fact that precious little of its music has made it beyond its shores – and if it has gone anywhere, it’s been to its former colonial power Portugal. So everything here is so new and feels somehow definitive. Perhaps because it’s titled ‘the 100 greatest songs of the ’60s and ’70s, and consists of five hours of music spread across four CDs and bound together in a large 39 page glossy hardcover book. It’s without doubt the most remarkable and comprehensive packaging this writer has ever seen, offering important contextual information about Angola including its climate and languages, its geography, the civil war and its relationship with Portugal and independence.
It’s positively exhaustive – except if you don’ fala Portuguese you’re out of luck as there’ no English translation. Yet this only adds to the exotic element of the package and there are some great pics. Only eight of the tracks here have ever been released, having been stored in Portugal since 1975, the year Angola achieved independence. Drum kits are entirely absent, instead it’s mostly hand percussion, rickety shakers with smooth simple grooves from the bass acoustic or electric guitars placed behind the rhythm section. Vocals are either in the official language Portuguese or one of the numerous dialects. Semba, a stylistic precursor to Brazil’ samba is particularly present on this collection, particularly on disc four, which is reserved for ballads. Though there are also links to rumba and Cuban music as the Angolans, whilst maintaining a distinctly African sounding rhythm section, remained open to numerous influences outside the country. And it’s gold; an incredible collection of predominantly unknown and obscure Angolan musicians, creating the kind of music that could never have existed elsewhere.
Bob Baker Fish
