Bonga

It was Christmas vacation, 1989 and I was with four other members of Tecnica in a cab in downtown Lusaka, Zambia getting a tour of the city. Michael Urmann, our executive director, was with his companion Mary, while Jeff Klein was with his wife whose name I can't recall. I was the president of the board of directors and I had ended up mediating between Michael and Jeff who couldn't get along. Michael was an aloof ex-Maoist who tended to view everybody involved with Tecnica as his employee, except me. Jeff Klein was a burly blue-collar machinist and electrician who had repaired power generating equipment in Managua. He was also a member of the Communist Party with deep "workerist" prejudices. These "workerist" prejudices were a little hypocritical because Jeff had been a professional archaeologist in a previous lifetime. I was accustomed to these sort of masquerades after having spent years in the "workerist" Socialist Workers Party, where all the steelworkers had degrees from places like the University of Wisconsin or Berkeley.

Jeff Klein viewed Urmann as Yuppie scum. Urmann, who had been a economics professor at the University of Utah before starting Tecnica, was a bit of a Yuppie but retained lots of his 1960s revolutionary fervor. I was constantly being pulled aside by Michael to get my advice how to "deal" with Jeff. Jeff felt left out of all the decisions Urmann was making unilaterally to set up a volunteer program with the African National Congress. The rest of the time Jeff was pulling me aside to get me to tell Urmann this or that on his behalf. There I was, an ex-Trotskyist mediating between an ex-Maoist and a Brezhnevite. I felt like a UN diplomat doing service in the former Yugoslavia.

Downtown Lusaka was a textbook example of combined and uneven development. Side-by-side there were skyscrapers nearing completion, but without any work crews in sight, and open-air markets where live chickens and pigs were being sold to shoppers from the mud-thatch hut villages that lay on the outskirts of the city. Each day you could see people walking to and fro on the main roads coming into the city. Nobody owned cars except government officials.

Urmann was intensely interested in the economy of Lusaka and kept asking the cabdriver questions about this and that. At one point he asked him why so many buildings were uncompleted. The cabbie told him in an icy tone, "YOU took everything with you." You, of course, referred to the colonialists.

The cab ride was my introduction to African music. As we tooled around Lusaka, the cabbie played cassettes non-stop. The music was like nothing I had ever heard before. I asked him what he was playing. He said it was from Zaire and it was called "Soukous". The music sounded an awful lot like Latin Salsa but the beat was a lot more complex than the 1-2-3, 1-2 "clave" of salsa. I resolved to find out more about this music when I got back to the United States.

(The trip was pretty successful. We placed Jeff with the ANC camp in the bush where he set up secure communications links between the ANC and their new York office. Urmann went to Mozambique and got commitment from the FRELIMO government to place our volunteers. And I fixed Thabo Mbeki's laptop computer which allowed him to complete Oliver Tambo's 50th anniversary address to the ANC.)

A few months later I went out to Berkeley, where the national office of Tecnica was located, for a board meeting. In between mapping out plans for the program in Africa, I wandered around downtown Berkeley. One evening I stopped in a record shop near the university that specialized in international music. I told the clerk, who had his own world music show on the local Pacifica station, that I wanted to purchase about 10 of the best African music records he could recommend.

At the top of the list was a record by Bonga, the Angolan artist. My copy of the record eventually became a gift to Will Wilkins, a local Pacifica deejay in NYC who I became friendly with when we worked together in CISPES. It was a great record, if not one of the greatest records ever to be made in Africa. I could never find another copy of the record. But now it is out on CD, on the Tinder Gold label with the title "Angola 72", a reference to the fact that the vinyl record--long out of print--was made in 1972. Tinder Gold "features classic world music albums that have not deserved the recognition they deserve." Tinder Gold, in turn, deserves recognition for bringing such treasures back to life.

One of the first things that must be understood when you talk about "African music" is that there are a myriad of styles that are as varied as those of Europe. European music includes both flamenco guitar as well as Scottish ballads. There is almost as much variety in Africa.

The music of the former Portuguese colonies--Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, Cape Verde--is heavily influenced by both Portuguese and Brazilian styles. Cesaria Evora, who hails from Cape Verde, has become very popular lately. Her style is called "morna", a medium tempo nostalgia-laden ballad that has a lot in common with Portuguese cabaret music.

Bonga's music has much more of a Brazilian sound and the rhythms evoke the Samba style that is practically synonymous with Brazilian music itself. Bonga sings in a distinct raspy voice that is a mixture of Harry Belafonte and the very young Louis Armstrong. Unfortunately, there are no translations of the songs, sung in Angolan dialects or Portuguese, but every one of them are deeply political as well as beautiful. Bonga was closely identified with the liberation struggle and is as much of a bard for the Angolan people as Miriam Makeba is to the people of South Africa. The Tinder Gold liner notes provide an excellent description of Bonga the man. Get the CD to enjoy Bonga the artist.

"Bonga's life and career trace an emblematic route across Africa and Bantu-speaking countries, with his loyalty to his Angolan roots as guide.

"Bonga Keunza was born Barcelo de Carvalho in 1943 in Kipiri, Bengo, north of Luanda, to a Zairean mother and Angolan father. His family lived in a 'musseque', a working-class district of the Angolan capital. Here, popular music was at the center of a new craze, after having been despised and cast aside by colonial powers. Bonga formed his group Kissueia, proudly proclaiming an Angolan identity at a time when independence movements were being formed.

"'We sang the hard facts of Angolan's lives under colonial domination,' says Bonga, 'Poverty, shantytowns, how it was for the children. We sang the dreadful sordid facts of life under the colonial regime. We sang popular songs, passed on by word of mouth, or at baptisms and weddings. Then, as the movement grew stronger, the colonial powers could no longer tolerate such a situation.

"Bonga, however, had another card up his sleeve that shielded him from repressive action: he was a champion runner. Thus, in 1966 he joined the Lisbon Benfica team, going on to become a 400 meter champion and setting a record he would hold for ten years. Nevertheless, he kept in touch with the independence movement from Lisbon, a fact which the Portuguese authorities did not fail to notice.

"He was forced into political exile in 1972, first living in Holland where he recorded this album. Originally produced for the Morabeza label, 'Angola 72' introduced the world to one of the greatest African artists of our time.

"Following the Portuguese military coup of April 25, 1974, which led to the beginning of negotiations with the independence movements, Bonga was able to return to Portugal, and above all, to Angola. He has since recorded numerous albums and performed around the world. He now lives near Lisbon, Portugal and continues to produce and perform. He also maintains his political activism, and still joins numerous international organizations at human rights demonstrations."

Louis Proyect