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2LP
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LUS 86302LP
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"Bonga recorded his first album, Angola 72, in Rotterdam via the Morabeza label dedicated to Cape Verdean musicians. The album is a genuine masterpiece. Its ten songs, which are inexpressibly sad (although their heartrending melancholy is relieved by upbeat tempos), are an account and summary of his experiences in Luanda. 'On this record,' says Bonga, 'you find all the emotions that filled my heart at the time, along with echoes of experiences that would later prove crucial in my life. For the arrangements, I chose acoustic guitar and dikanza and other percussion instruments. The music is semba, with numbers that switch from fast to slow, like spirituals.' Bonga was encouraged by the critical success of this first effort. He added the sweet melodies of Cape Verdean morna and the rhythmic texture of Congolese rumba to his new songs. Two years later, he felt ready to record a second album, Angola 74, again on the Morabeza label. On it, Bonga sang 'Sodade,' an Amandio Cabral number that Djunga had released as a single. The Angolan wanted to record it as soon as he heard it for the first time. Today, the gravel-voiced singer is still continuing on his musical path, enlarging a repertoire that remains rooted in the social and cultural history of a land that was ravaged for so long by unremitting war. It was important to re-release these two recordings. They have a place of choice among the finest of modern African musical productions."
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2LP
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LUS 86303LP
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"Since his debut in 1972 with his masterpiece Angola 72, Bonga has established himself as one of the greatest voices in world music. This Best Of Bonga proves it, if proof were needed, with a selection of his most essential tracks: 'Mulemba Xangola' (duet with Lura), 'Mona Ki Ngi Xica,' his biggest hit, 'Kaxexe,' 'Bairro,' 'Agua Rara,' and his version of 'Sodade,' created long before Cesaria Evora -- as well as two previously unreleased remixes of 'Sodade' and 'Kaxexe' by Dutch collective Arp Frique. 20 tracks, for an album that retraces the best of Bonga's discography, the golden voice of Angola."
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LP
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LUS 76259LP
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"The masterpiece of legendary Angolan singer Bonga Angola 74, finally re-edited in vinyl LP with their original sleeves. José Adelino Barcelo de Carvalho was born in Kipiri in 1953. When he was still a child, his family moved to a district in the north of the city of Luanda. Formerly a fortress built in 1576, the capital of Angola was still a Portuguese colony at the time. In his youth, before José changed his colonial name to the more Angolan Bonga Kuenda, he lived in the city's poorer quarters, called musseques -- meaning 'built with sand' in Kimbundu, one of the country's main languages. In the mid Fifties, Africa was beginning to rebel against colonial domination. Seventy years after the Berlin Conference, where the European powers divided up the continent between them, liberation movements were gathering momentum. Both peaceful negotiations and armed resistance heralded the end of colonization and the independence of different nations that followed in the next decade. Under the dictator Salazar, Portugal was one of the more intractable colonial powers. It decided to try and crush the green shoots of independence in Angola, where there were frequent rural revolts -- especially in the northern bush. In the musseques surrounding Luanda, there was much talk of armed struggle against the colonial troops. A climate of general unrest reigned in Ilha de Cabo, Barrio Operario and Sambizanga, where the Caribbean filmmaker Sara Maldoror shot one of the finest records of decolonization ever made. In the white districts, European administrators went about their everyday business with a few asimilados -- privileged Angolans who had embraced the culture, language and religion of the colonists. But in the suburbs, poets, novelists and artists led the resistance movement. They studied the history of their country and were inspired by stories of their ancestor N'Gola Kiluanje, King of N'Dongo, who fought the Portuguese army for many years back in the sixteenth century."
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