Anatomy of Kuduro: Articulating the Angolan Body Politic after the War

Abstract

Kuduro , meaning "hard-ass" or "in a hard place," is a contemporary genre of music and dance produced and consumed in Angola, especially in Luanda. This article maps kuduro historically and assesses it in its current moment. While the dance is full of invention and the genre has thrived in the informal economy, this alternative expression and the infrastructure it produces cannot be considered politically or economically liberatory. But the international "os Kuduristas" campaign promoted by two of the Angolan president's children and companies they own shows the dangers of a culturally conservative discourse that dismisses kuduro as a vulgar popular phenomenon while hegemonic political and commercial forces embrace it.Résumé: Kuduro, qui signifie "dur à cuire" ou "dans une passe difficile," est un genre contemporain de musique et de danse venant d'Angola, en particulier du Luanda. Cet article présente le Kuduro dans son évolution historique et évalue son impact actuel. Bien que la danse soit pleine d'invention et que le genre ait prospéré dans l'économie informelle, cette expression alternative et l'infrastructure qu'elle produit ne peut pas être considérée comme politiquement ou économiquement libéra-trice. En même temps, la campagne internationale "os Kuduristas" promue par deux des enfants du président angolais et les compagnies qu'ils possèdent, montre les dangers d'un discours culturellement conservateur qui rejette le Kuduro comme un vulgaire phénomène populaire tandis que des forces politiques et commerciales hégémoniques se l'approprient pour promouvoir leur discours.

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“…At the same time, Nigeria’s military ruler tried to gain the upper hand in this field of contention by organising a two-million-person march, a public mega-event that also deployed “artistic resources by the state in the search for hegemony” (Olukotun, 2002: 209). Other scholars have pointed to similar dynamics in countries such as Nigeria in the 1970s (Labinjoh, 1982; Langley, 2010; Sithole, 2012), Zimbabwe (Eyre, 2001), Tanzania (Englert, 2008b; Reuster-Jahn, 2008), Ivory Coast (Schumann, 2013, Schumann, 2015), Angola (Moorman, 2014), Kenya (Mutonya, 2004), Cameroon (Nyamnjoh and Fokwang, 2005), and Uganda (Schneidermann, 2014a; Schneidermann and Diallo, 2016). Schumann (2013) has illustrated that a government’s strategy towards musicians can also shift from co-optation to repression once musicians are no longer considered a necessary tool with which to legitimise its rule.…”

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“…6 The scarcity-resilience narrative portrays kuduristas as resourceful, and sometimes as opposing Angola's dictatorship (Bagulho 2010;Young 2012; La Barre 2019). 7 However, while many young people in Luanda see kuduro as a tool of social mobility (Tomás 2013), most players who were first active during the forming years are from middle or upper middle class backgrounds (Moorman 2014). Many are socially connected to the ruling MPLA party, and have often leveraged their relations with the political power networks in order to increase their visibility, rather than openly critique them (Alisch 2017).…”

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“…At the dawn of a new century, semba made a return -in song, on the radio waves and across many stages, as well as in the memory and affections of the peoples of Luanda. It was as if semba also drawn on kuduro and kizomba's growing popularity, as these two genres of music and dance quickly spread worldwide to place Angola on the map, musically, and in terms of its fantasies and imaginaries, and its potential cultural circulation (Alisch 2017;Soares 2015;Moorman 2014;Marcon 2012;Moorman 2008;Stokes 2004).…”