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CD Review
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New York Times, CD Review >>
Two of the singers whose albums are reviewed here have
spent time in jail. The third was forced into exile until
the overthrow of the colonial regime he opposed. Their
voices can sound scarred and mournful, but their music is
just as likely to head for the dance floor, where warnings,
protests and messages of compassion can draw hope from the
beat.
'Kaxexe'
Bonga
As an exile and expatriate, Bonga Kwenda became the musical
conscience of Angola, with a pained, husky voice that seems
to hold all the troubles of his homeland.
When Angola was still a Portuguese colony in the 1960's, he
was one of its top athletes. Traveling with a Lisbon soccer
team, he carried messages between independence fighters
within Angola and exiles abroad. The government caught on
to his activities in the early 1970's, and he went into
exile himself in Rotterdam, where he made his first album
in 1972. Its lyrics earned him an arrest warrant in Angola
for sedition.
After Angola achieved independence in 1975, Bonga divided
his time between Angola and Europe, seeing his country
devastated by three decades of civil war. Although he lives
and records in Europe, his songs stay focused on Angola.
He sings in a mix of Portuguese and Angolan languages, and
his music is rooted in an Angolan beat, semba, that is
related to the Brazilian samba by way of Angolan slaves
sent to Brazil. It is underlined with the buzz and scratch
of the Angolan dizanka, a notched stick used as a scraper.
Through the years Bonga has merged Angolan rhythms with
styles from elsewhere, particularly Afro-Portuguese ones
like samba and the Cape Verdean ballads called morna.
The songs on "Kaxexe" (Times Square), which means "in
hiding," are filled with glimpses of shattered lives and
yearning for an end to violence. But the music is all
clarity and grace. Ballads like "Kianje" ("Before") and
"Poeira" ("Dust") are as poised as they are heartsick,
tinged with morna and the Portuguese fado. Yet they're
outnumbered by upbeat tunes that use a handful of mostly
acoustic instruments - guitars, accordion, hand drums and
sometimes a Brazilian cavaquinho, the miniature samba
guitar - to create airy, irrepressible grooves that find
Angolan connections everywhere. All the burdens of history
can't hold down Bonga's music.
He performs tonight at Joe's Pub at the Public Theater, 425
Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, in the East Village.
04/05/04
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