THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE ARTY

I remember being in the Coliseu dos Recreios one of Lisbon's most emblematic venues during the 1st African Awards ceremony when Se Bem stunned the audience by winning Best Revelation Artist award that evening, homage was paid to all the big names of the Portuguese ex colonies culture scene. And one, whom is not considered a musician in the full sense of the word, wins a prize of this magnitude, well... Nobody knew how to react. Se Bem went on stage accompanied by his dancer Salsicha and provoked an explosion of rhythm and color in the Coliseum. Everybody was dancing like crazy, and then, when he felt everyone was at his mercy. he left refusing to go back to the stage even with the roaring crowd calling him back. from that moment on, I was convinced that Kuduro would change the way we perceive modern Angola.

The essence of Kuduro is a fusion of Kilapanga - traditional Angolan rhythms, and techno. But forget about the sophisticated Detroit Techno. Everything that this style of music is able to produce, from the most basic to the most complex rhythms have been assimilated and then translated to African context by a generation of new musicians helped by cheap computers and hacked software.

From the beginning Kuduro involved distinct body movements, Luanda's ghetto youngsters created dance moves to follow the accelerated techno rhythms that Djs were playing in the dance hall. These moves, where the ass in the focus of the body, caught fire in the clubs, contaminating everything and everyone. From up-scale parties in the Mussulo's island to Lisbon's African Clubs, the slogan that has ruled ever since then is "to dance kuduro one needs a hard ass".

Most of the Kuduro artists don't get radio airplay, nor is it easy to find their records in the shops. The reason, stated by the artists themselves, is linked to the fact that Kuduro portrays Angola's street living in a raw manner without constraints or self-censorship. The explicit nature of the lyrics and the rudimentary way in which the music is produced, generates consumptions barriers to Kuduro within Angola itself.

Without solid promotion Kuduro is the sole property of night clubs, but somehow Kuduro is still able to escape the dance hall: one of the best promotional means are taxi drivers, who use Kuduro as the soundtrack to tackling everyday traffic in big cities sush as Luanda and Benguela.

Black Market, low quality CDs are the other channel of promotion. The most emblematic is Roque Santeiro Market, one of the biggest open sky market in Africa. There, one can find everything: from synths and PCs to the techno tunes that feeds Kuduro producers all over Angola. Everything starts and ends in Roque. The same is replicated in Lisbon. One finds a large number of Kuduro productions in peripheral markets such as Praça de Espanha, Feira do Relógio or Moraria, places inhabited by ex-colony immigrants. There is no copyrights protection, no way of knowing how much of Kuduro records are sold therefore it does not register in the charts. The web is becoming the most appealing channel for Kuduro promotion. Just google the work "Kuduro" and you'll get an idea of the number of productions out there.

Dog Murras and Helder o Rei do Kuduro are atists who produce and live kuduro in a convetional way, under the wings of Vidisco, Portugal's biggest African Music label. With a solid distribution system, they are able to sell 20.000 records. Dog Murras says Kuduro's biggest enemy is piracy, because it prevents artists from make money out of the music they create. Others disagree, and argue that Kuduro was born freely and those imposing music industry rules are killing the freshness that feeds the genre. Opinions are divided, but every Kuduro lover agrees on one thing: Kuduro is the biggest culture manifestation of Angolan origin in modern times.

10 years have past since I first heard Dj Amorim's Kuduro being played in Lisbon African discos, and 7 years since Se Bem's explosion of rhythm in Lisbon Coliseum.
Kuduro with is hallucinating rhythms and pop riffs is here to stay.
The proof is seen in clubs when Buraka Som Sistema are performing their progressive Kuduro twisting and adding new elements that seduce another public, mainly white and black middle classcs kids that cannot stand the roughness of the original sound.

Bonga , one of Angola's biggest and most respected living musicians, said to crowd in one of his last concerts in Lisbon, that Kuduro's slang is the language that a generation of Angolans will adopt in 2010, whether we want to or not - this gives you food for thought.
Songs by Puto Prata , Noite Dia, Os Lambas and Dj Znobia, mirror the urgency and revolt inherent to the African reality. But however harsh the content of songs may be, there is an optimistic denominator to all of them in finding a path out for a generation that knows little more that 30 years of civil war.
Kuduro represents hope for the young generations, just like Hip Hop and UK Drum and Bass to many who grow in the urban outskirts of big cities.

In Lisbon, Kuduro is becoming the sound that better represents the mixed-race living of the suburbs surrounding the city. African presence in those neighborhoods is historical and cultures do mix.

Buraka Som Sistema have been approaching Angolan Kuduro under global permises, bringing it closer to Broken Beat, Drum and Bass, Grime, Dub-Step and even Funk Carioca. The latter was also born out of urban social tensions, breeding and multiplying with rudimentary means until it was able to conquer an audience usually unawere or skeptical towards ghetto production. Major producers, such as IG culture and Diplo have been following Buraka Som Sistema's music closely, and believe that it's ready for the masses. The fact that the collective has dubbed it's music as "Progressive Kuduro" has also helped in this quest.

Kuduro is closer to dance music than world music. These artists will make a significant effort to distance themselves from that, because the world music market still sells Africa as exotic, romanticizing the idea of lost continent.
Kuduro's beauty lies in it's rhythm, what the boys did was exchange the djambes and African drums for japanese beatboxes. They now sing about an Africa that is poor, reinventing itself amidst the smell of everlasting gunpowder, hovering like an invisible cloud over the garbage of every African Metopolis; everything National Geographic documentaries and CNN newscasts fail to show. It is probable that most artits will never make a living from the music they produce and Kuduro will remain confined to the universe of piracy. Maybe an urban music "Peter Gabriel" will discover the genre and divulge all that Kuduro has to offer.

Wrote this article for Zoot#4 2006