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Music is a bridge
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Pasadena Weekly, Music is a bridge >>
Most of us accept, at some point in life, Thomas Wolfe's dictum "You Can't Go Home Again." That phrase takes on more painful resonance when the home in question has been riven by civil war particularly one as fratricidal and lengthy as the conflict that all but destroyed the south west African nation of Angola.
Globally renowned singer and composer Waldemar Bastos grew up in Angola, the son of nurses who exposed him to an eclectic music mix: Cape Verdean morna, Brazilian samba, Jimi Hendrix, the Bee Gees, rumba, Nat King Cole, tango, Carios Santana. Bastos started playing music by ear when he was still young child right around the time the Portuguese colony started fighting for its independence in 1961. At some point in his teens, Bastos was tossed in jail on murky political grounds, a surreal nightmare that still informs his worldview.
By the time Angola celebrated its hard-won independence in 1975, Bastos had established himself as romantic, peace-promoting troubadour with admirable guitar skills and a distinctively emotive vocal style. But independence swiftly disintegrated into a civil war that didn't end until the mid-1990s. Realizing the new regime was even less tolerant of artists, Bastos slipped away in 1982 to Portugal, where he still resides.
He kept his lost home alive in his music. His global breakthrough, 1998's "Pretaluz," was obviously influenced by his imprisonment
and a lifetime lived amidst war. His new album, "Renascence." celebrates the healing he says is occurring in the homeland he can finally visit again.
The lushly orchestrated title track promises, "Whoever sows love will gather fruit that is ripe"
There's an undeniable melancholy pulsing beneath the lilting dance rhythms, but "Paz Pao Amor" (Peace Bread and Love) urgently implores "Let's all of us live in peace/ Let's pray to our father," while the exotic "Sabores Da Terra" (Flavors of the Land) exalts Angola's culture and natural beauty with the help of a Turkish string section. "Pitanga Madurin-ha" is an unabashed love note ("I came home, to my land, the land love"); it gets a more aggressive, album-closing remix featuring Jamaican toaster Chaka Demus.
Bastos' incorporation of various north African, Brazilian, Portuguese and South African township rhythms underscores the interconnectedness of all cultures and nations. At a time when the international community is warily eyeing violent religious and ethnic clashes in Iraq, his celebration of stability in his once devastated country is heartening.
-Bliss
The Grand Performances series presents Waldemar Bastos in con cert with morna-style singer Maria de Barros at 7:30 p.m. Friday at California Plaza, 350 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. Free to the pub lic. Call (213) 687-2159, or visit www. waldemarbastos.com.
07/28/05
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