Various Artists
Huambo Música Sessions
PangeiArt (57 mins)
From spicy semba to the hip club beats of kuduro, Angola’s urban music styles are often those that we hear loudest in the world music circuit. For the Tsikaya ‘Músicos do Interior’ project, however, it’s the music of Angola’s rural areas that deserves wider attention.
Tsikaya aim to create an audio archive of the sounds and music of the Angolan countryside, and in their second release, the focus is on the central province of Huambo. The seven artists featured on Huambo Música Sessions cover a range of styles and present the musical diversity in Huambo Province, from the lively female percussion and vocal choir of Grupo Katiavala, to the Congolese-inspired dance band Banda Crescente and the joyous guitar picking of Alimba Okimbo.
A striking feature of these rural styles is how far they are from the typical Lusophone sound – there’s little room for saudade here. Instead, their sound is much more similar to other southern central African styles; some of the album’s more brooding tracks even conjure up shadows of the music of Angola’s far-distant Caribbean relatives the Garifuna.
Huambo Música Sessions is an amazing album from a fantastic and worthwhile project. Open your ears to the inside sounds of Angola!