Nearly 40 years after the release of Angola 72, the reference album in the history of world music and independence manifest among the Angolan population, Bonga travels in songs, during a special concert at the Alhambra, a life of music and exile.
For the first time in Bonga’s career, this concert is the subject of a film recording.
For this engaged artist, like for so many other of his Angolan compatriots before the independence, the music is a way to keep human dignity in the face of the oppressor.
We can take their land, their diamonds, their gas, their oil, we cannot take their music, the becomes a space of resistance, how to be and stay human.
This resistance involves an attachment to forms and traditional instruments of his country: Bonga plays “dikanzas”, a percussion instrument in the shape of hit striated bamboo, invented by his ancestors. The rhythm which supplies his music, the “Semba”, is a traditional rhythm of the Luanda region (ancestor of the Brazilian Samba).
If he surrounds himself by more modern instruments and formal elements (acoustic guitars, Portuguese Fado snippets or Brazilian music), the roots of his music are immersed in the traditions of his people.