Kuduro dance - Angola

by Gloria Ssali

Title

Kuduro dance - Angola

Artist

Gloria Ssali

Medium

Drawing - Drawing

Description

Kuduro (or kuduru) is a type of music and dance originally born in Angola in the 1980s. It is characterized as uptempo, energetic, and danceable . Kuduro, which translates as "hard ass", began in Luanda, Angola in the late 80s. Initially, producers sampled traditional carnival music like zouk and soca from the Caribbean and semba from Angola and laid this around a fast 4/4 beat. The roots of kuduro can be traced to the late 1980s when producers in Luanda, Angola started mixing African percussion samples with simple calypso and soca rhythms to create a style of music then known as "batida". European and American electronic music had begun appearing in the market, which attracted Angolan musicians and inspired them to incorporate their own musical styles.[1] An Angolan MC, Sebem, began toasting over this and is credited with starting the genre.[2]
The name itself is a word with a specific meaning to location in the Kimbundu language, which is native to the northern portion of Angola. It has a double meaning in that it also translates to "hard ass" or "stiff bottom" in Portuguese, which is the official language of Angola. Kuduro dancing is similar to Dancehall dancing of Jamaica. It combines traditional Angolan Kilapanga, Semba and Zouk with Western house and techno.[3] As Vivian Host points out in her article, despite the common assumption that "world music" from non-Western countries holds no commonalities with Western modern music, Angolan kuduro does contain "elements in common with punk, deep tribal house, and even Daft Punk."[4] It is thus the case that cultural boundaries and limitations within the musical spectrum are constantly shifting and being redefined. And though Angolan kuduro reflects an understanding and, further, an interpretation of Western musical forms, the world music category that it fits under tends to reject the idea of Western musical imperialism.[4] The larger idea here is that advancements in technology and communications and the thrust of music through an electronic medium have made transcending cultural and sonic musical structures possible. According to Blentwell Podcasts, kuduro is a "mixture of house, hip-hop, and ragga elements,"[5] which illustrates how this is at once an Angolan-local and global music. Indeed, this "musical cross-pollination",[4] as Vivian Host calls it, represents a local appropriation of global musical forms, such that the blending of different musics creates the music of a "new world

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September 13th, 2011

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