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Antonio Madiata, a player of the lungoyi-ngoyi, or traditional 2-string Kongo fiddle, plays his own composition in Mbanza-Kongo, Angola on July 11, 2012. Videography by Ned Sublette. Ned Sublette’s work in Angola was undertaken with the support of a 2012 Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion, a program of the University of Southern California’s Knight Chair in Media and Religion.

Hip Deep Angola, Part 3: A Spiritual Journey to Mbanza-Kongo by Afropop Worldwide on SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds

Luanda

The 27 year-long Angolan civil war was also an international crossroads of the Cold War as well as a regional resource war, involving Cuba, the Soviet Union, Zaire, South Africa, and the U.S. When it was over, Namibia was independent, apartheid had fallen, Angola was a nation, and the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. Through music, interviews, and historical radio clips, producer Ned Sublette, author of Cuba and Its Music, tells the story of Cuba’s massive commitment in Africa, from the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the subsequent independence of Congo, to the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. We’ll talk to guest scholar Piero Gleijeses, foreign policy specialist at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and author of Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa 1959-1976 and the forthcoming Visions of Freedom, and to Marissa Moorman, author of the forthcoming Tuning in to Nation: Radio, State Power, and the Cold War in Angola, 1933-2002, who will share with us rare archival recordings. We’ll talk to Cuban trovador Tony Pinelli, who traveled in a brigada artística playing music for Cuban soldiers and for Angolans, and to Angolan composer, instrument builder, and musicologist Victor Gama, who traveled in remote areas of the interior recording music. And from Cuba, Angola, Zaire, and Portugal, we’ll hear some of the music that accompanied the struggle.

Hip Deep Angola, Part 4: The Cuban Intervention in Angola by Afropop Worldwide on SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds

Hip Deep Angola, Part 3

Hip Deep Angola, Part 2

Hip Deep Angola, Part 1

António Madiata

To make this unprecedented program, producer Ned Sublette traveled to Mbanza-Kongo, the ancient seat of the Kongo empire located in present-day northern Angola, where he spoke to Dr. Bárbaro Martínez Ruiz, professor of art and art history at Stanford. We’ll learn about the simbi, the spirits that Martínez Ruiz describes as “the multiple power of god”; hear Antonio Madiata play the lungoyi-ngoyi, the two-stringed viola of the Kongo court; attend a session of the lumbu, the traditional tribunal of elders; and talk to a traditional healer. With the help of artist-scholar C. Daniel Dawson, we’ll survey Kongo-Ngola culture in the diaspora – in Brasil, Haiti, Cuba, and more. A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY TO MBANZA-KONGO is supported by a 2012 Knight Luce Fellowship for Reporting on Global Religion. The fellowship is a program of the University of Southern California’s Knight Chair in Media and Religion.

Hip Deep Angola, Part 3: A Spiritual Journey to Mbanza-Kongo by Afropop Worldwide on SoundCloud - Hear the world’s sounds

We explore the role music played in the creation of a uniquely Angolan consciousness as the country struggled toward independence in the 1960s and ‘70s after centuries of colonialism. Our guides will be producer Ned Sublette, on the ground in Angola, and Dr. Marissa Moorman, historian of southern Africa, and author ofIntonations: A Social History of Music in Luanda, Angola from 1945 to Recent Times. We’ll hear the pathbreaking group Ngola Ritmos, who dared sing songs in Kimbundu publicly when it was prohibited by the Portuguese. We’ll hear immortal voices from the age when the guitar-driven style called semba ruled, as well as some snazzy ‘60s guitar instrumentals.

▶ Hip Deep Angola, Part 1: Music and Nation in Luanda by Afropop Worldwide