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"Global Hit" feature (click "go there" to hear audio)
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The World (PRI), "Global Hit" feature (click "go there" to hear audio) >>
The African nation of Angola has known little peace since it became independent in 1975.
First, there was a civil war among three rival rebel groups. An accord ended the war in 1991 -- but the fighting resumed the next year.
The war dragged on until another truce in 2002. Angolan singer-songwriter Waldemar Bastos left his home country long ago for Portugal to escape the violence. But he's been back several times in the past couple of years. The World's Marco Werman reports that Bastos's returns have given him a lot to sing about.
It was 2003 when the Angolan government invited Waldemar Bastos to come home. After spending two decades in Lisbon, avoiding the WAR in Angola, Bastos finally got the chance to perform in a PEACE festival in the capital Luanda.
Coming back to Angola says Waldemar Bastos was a very emotional moment. It was a point in my life that will always be a benchmark, he says, just knowing my country was in peace. It was, says Bastos, a renaissance for me. And Renascence is the title of Waldemar Bastos's newest recording.
The title track to Renascence shows just how incredulous Waldemar Bastos was witnessing peace in his country. The song goes: "Are they real flowers or a fairytale, or are they the flowers that I sowed and that you now give me at this dawning?"
It is a question you can imagine Waldemar Bastos asking on each of the six visits he's made back to Angola in the last two years. It's as if he's rubbing his eyes, unable to believe that his Angolan brothers, as he calls them, have stopped their war.
Elsewhere on Renanscence are other clues of the new found love Waldemar Bastos has for his country. The song Agua do Bengo, for example.
Bastos explains that the river Bengo provides freshwater to Luanda. He says Angolans also consider it a mystical river. There are fertile lands on its shores he says. But Angolans also say that if you drink the water of the River Bengo -- just once -- you'll never forget Angola.
Waldemar Bastos clearly has a renewed appreciation for Angola now that he's able to go back. He's certainly overjoyed that the civil war in Angola is over. And he says his songs are not filled with as many political messages as they once were.
Waldemar Bastos says Renanscence is not an anti-war album. It's more an album that shows my inner peace -- he says -- it shows my joy of having lived this peace. And, he adds, it's not only about Angola. It's about the values every human being on this planet should be embracing. And violence and turbulence around the globe Bastos says have challenged values like respect and dignity in recent years.
Waldemar Bastos is in the middle of a brief US tour. And he doesn't seem too concerned about how well his songs of peace in Angola stick to American audiences. He says he's not here to give a history lesson.
What's behind all my lyrics explains Bastos is beauty. I can see that the audiences here understand the beauty. That was always the aim of my art, he says. To transmit beauty, good things, beautiful things and love. And -- he says -- everybody understands that.
Even a song that lyrically screams out in pain is gorgeous. "Georgina" tells about a soldier from Angola's civil war who comes back to Luanda looking for his girlfriend. And either she's run off with another man or she's moved out of town. But for whatever reason, the soldier can't find his woman.
Waldemar Bastos is not moving permanently back to Angola, not yet anyway. He says the recording industry back home is not as developed as that in Europe. But some day, he says, he will go home to Angola to stay. 08/02/05 >> go there
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