Dueling bands and good girls: Gender, music, and nation in Luanda's Musseques, 1961-1974

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 37, Issue 2, 2004, Pages 255-288

  Moorman, Marissa J ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33748513223     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/4129009     Document Type: Review

References (71)

1. Lourdes Van Dunem, Olga Baltazar, Dina Santos, and Maria Mambo Café are still alive and resident in Luanda. Lilly Tchiumba and Belita Palma are both deceased; Alba Clington is in poor health in Lisbon; and Mila Melo lives in Australia.
2. Scholars of Angola mention groups like the band Ngola Ritmos and thepolitico-cultural club Bota Fogo in passing. (I discuss them in some detail inmy dissertation, "'Feel Angolan with the Music': A Social History of Musicand the Nation, Luanda, Angola, 1945-75, " Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota, 2004) They pay greater attention to the literary movement of the sameperiod and its relationship to nationalism.
3. See for example, Marcelo Bittencourt, Dos Jornais às Armas:Trajectórias da Contestaçào Angolana (Lisbon, 1999);
4. Mário António Fernandes de Oliveira, A Formaçã o da Literatura Angolana (1851-1950) (Lisbon, 1997);
5. Russell Hamilton, Voices from an Empire (Minneapolis, 1975) and Literatura Africana, Literatura Necessária (Lisbon, 1984);
6. and Michel Laban, Angola: Encontre com Escritores, vols. I and II (Porto, 1991).
7. Jean-Michel Mabeko Tali notes that the support of musseque residents forthe MPLA was decisive in their achieving control of Luanda against the forces ofthe FNLA and UNITA. See Tali, Dissidências e Poder de Estado: o MPLAPerante Si Próprio (1962-1977) (Luanda, 2001), II, chs. 9-10.
8. On the semi-autonomous nature of the groups that arose to support the MPLA see Franz-Wilhelm Heimer, Decolonization Conflict in Angola, 1974-76: AnEssay in Political Sociology (Geneva, 1979), 50-51, 58.
9. See also Edmundo Rocha who, following Christine Messiant, suggests thatthe tailors, catechists, nurses, pastors, drivers and workers of the mussequeswere critical to nationalist mobilization both within the city and in the ruralareas. Rocha, Angola: Contribuição ao Estudo da Génese do Nacionalismo Moderno Angolano (período de 1950-1964) (Testemunho e Estudo Documental) (Luanda, 2003), 76.
10. Ch. Didier Gondola analyzes a similar set of processes at work incolonial Leopoldville. He treats music as a political discourse and shows how ananticolonial stance was already present in the city's music well beforepolitical leaders began demanding political changes. Ch. Didier Gondola, "Ata ndele ... et l'independence vint. Musique, jeunes et contestationpolitique dans les capitales congolaises, " in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitchet al., eds., Les Jeunes en Afrique: La politique et la ville, II (Paris, 1992), 463-87.
11. As Patrick Chabal points out, however, political representation wasnotoriously lacking in Portugal's African colonies even in this period. See Patrick Chabal and others, A History of Postcolonial Lusophone Africa(Bloomington, 2002), 43.
12. Phyllis Martin's work on Brazzaville and Ch. Didier Gondola's work on Brazzaville and Kinshasa look at the same phenomenon with considerably morefinesse than I do. Martin follows the development of Congolese music in theinterwar period in the African-owned clubs in Brazzaville's Africanneighborhoods and Gondola looks at music, parties, and bar-dancing in the twocities in the same period. See Ch. Didier Gondola "'Bisengo ya la joie':Fête, sociabilité et politique dans les capitalescongolaises, " in Odile Goerg, ed., Fêtes urbaines en Afrique:Espaces, identités et pouvoirs (Paris, 1999), 87-111,
13. and "Ô Kisasa makambo! Métamorphoses etreprésentations urbaines de Kinshasa à travers le discoursemusical des années 1950-1960, " Le Mouvement Social 204(July-September 2003), 109-29;
14. and Phyllis Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville(Cambridge, 1995), esp. Ch. 5.
15. Chico Coio (February 15, 2002); Luís Martins "Xabanu" (November 21, 2001); and Lamartine.
16. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London, 1996), 24-25.
17. I am using "alternative" in contrast to "oppositional, " following Robin Kelley who borrows the term from Raymond Williams. See Robin D. G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class(New York, 1996), 47.
18. In African Stars: Studies in Black South African Performance (Chicago, 1991), 18. Ch. Didier Gondola also explores this aspect of urban parties in Kinshasa and Brazzaville in the 1950s and 1960s and comes to similar conclusionsabout the "otherwise" of these spaces and the sovereignty manifestedthere. See Gondola, "'Bisengo ya la joie, '" esp. 91 and 99.
19. Kelley, Race Rebels, 44.
20. For other literature looking at the relationship of music and dance andnation see Susan Geiger's TANU Women: Gender and Culture in the Making of Tanganyikan Nationalism, 1955-65 (Portsmouth, 1997);
21. Macedo, Ngola Ritmos;
22. Tom Turino, Nationalists, Cosmopolitans, and Popular Music in Zimbabwe(Chicago, 2000);
23. Kelly M. Askew, Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania (Chicago, 2002).
24. For earlier related work see Terence Ranger, Dance and Society in Eastern Africa (Berkeley, 1975)
25. and Margaret Strobel, Muslim Women in Mombasa, 1890-1975 (New Haven, 1979).
26. For work outside the African continent see Robin D. Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artisitic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940(Pittsburgh, 1997);
27. Hermano Vianna, O Mistério do Samba (Rio de Janeiro, 1995);
28. and Peter Wade, Music, Race and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia (Chicago, 2000).
29. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York, 1995), 353.
30. Ella Shohat and Robert Stam, Unthinking Eurocentrism: Multiculturalismand the Media (New York, 1994), 103.
31. Martin notes marked class differences in the club and music scene in Brazzaville in the interwar period. Martin, Leisure and Society, 135.
32. Ch. Didier Gondola looks at music in Kinshasa as a terrain of genderedstruggle in which women are able to re-shape power relations. See Gondola, "Popular Music, Urban Society, and Changing Gender Relations in Kinshasa, Zaire (1950-1990), in Maria Grosz-Ngate and Omari H. Kokole, eds., Gendered Encounters (New York, 1997), 65-85.
33. Gerald Bender, Angola Under the Portuguese: The Myth and the Reality(Berkeley, 1978), Ch. 6;
34. Franz-Wilhelm Heimer, "Education, Economics and Social Change in Rural Angola: The Case of the Cuima Region, " in his edited collection, Social Change in Angola (Munich, 1973), 111-44.
35. Benedict Schubert asserts that "members of the majority blackpopulation ... said and say that they never got along as well as they did inthat period [the 1960s]. It is a profound contradiction of the Angolan warwhereby the colonial system, just as it was being attacked, got stronger in sucha way that it corrected certain injustices and hardships and it transmitted tomany - not just whites and mestiços - the impression that in Angola theywere making a step towards progress." Benedict Schubert, A Guerra e as Igrejas: Angola 1961-1991 (Lucerne, 2000), 82.
36. See also Jeremy Ball, "'The Colossal Lie, '" Ch. 4 .
37. Scholars of popular culture and African music, like Karin Barber and Christopher Alan Waterman, have identified such an intermediate class ascritical to the emergence of popular urban styles. See Barber, "Popular Arts in Africa, " African Studies Review 30 (3): 14-15, 29-30,
38. and The Generation of Plays (Bloomington, 2000), 2-3;
39. and Waterman, Jùjú: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music (Chicago, 1990), 9, 87.
40. Bender, Angola Under the Portuguese, 156-57.
41. Heimer, Decolonization Conflict in Angola, 12-13, and 21. Barros alsomakes this claim ("Alguns Aspectos") though her work is based solelyon colonial decrees and is therefore somewhat incompletely researched.
42. Elisete Marques da Silva, in Social Change in Angola (Munich, 1973), 209n. 3.
43. Schubert, A Guerra e as Igrejas, 81.
44. Barros, "Alguns Aspectos, " 50-60.
45. See also Henrique Guerra, Estrutura Económica e Classes Sociais:os Últimos Anos do Colonialismo Português em Angola (Lisbon, 1979), 127.
46. Ramiro Ladeiro Monteiro, "A Família nos Musseques de Luanda:Subsídios para o Seu Estudo" (Luanda, 1973), 227. His data wascollected in 1970.
47. Ramiro Ladeiro Monteiro, "From Extended to Residual Family: Aspectsof Social Change in the Musseques of Luanda, " in Heimer, ed., Social Changein Angola, 211-33.
48. Interviews with Chico Coio (February 15, 2002); Carlos Lamartine(September 4, 2001); Carlos Alberto Pimentel (October 3, 2001), Benguela;Matemona Sebastião (February 27, 2002); and Luís Martins"Xabanu" (November 21, 2001).
49. I discuss this in greater detail in an article on fashion, Marisssa Moorman, "Putting on a Pano and Dancing Like Our Grandparents: Nation and Dress in Late Colonial Luanda, " in Jean Allman, ed., Fashioning Africa:Power and the Politics of Dress (Bloomington, 2004).
50. Ch. Didier Gondola conceives of parties in colonial Brazzaville and Kinshasa in the same terms. Gondola, "Bisengo ya la joie, " 91.
51. Jean-Michel Mabeko Tali, Dissidências e Poder de Estado: O MPLAPerante Si Próprio (1962-1977) (Luanda, 2001), 30.
52. For other work on masculinities in Africa, see Lisa A. Lindsay and Stephan F. Miescher, eds., Men and Masculinities in Modern Africa (Portsmouth, 2003).
53. Particularly in relation to music and culture see Gondola, "Popular Music, "
54. where he discusses Congolese music of the 1950s and 1960s as a maleculture and Mwenda Ntarangwi, Gender, Identity, and Performance: Understanding Swahili Cultural Realities Through Song (Trenton, 2003), esp. Ch. 6.
55. For related work on rivalry or competition between bands and musicianssee Waterman, Jùjù, 22
56. and Erlmann, African Stars, 169.
57. See Laura Fair on a similar dynamic that moved in the other direction(from dance/ngoma to soccer) in Zanzibar. Laura Fair, Pastimes and Politics:Culture, Community, and Identity in Post-Abolition Zanzibar (1890-1945) (Athens, 2001), 227, 239, 263.
58. Phyllis Martin mentions soccer player, musician, and politician Emmanuel Dadet and soccer player cum musician Paul Kamba. Martin, Leisure and Society, 119 and 143-45.
59. See Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, Ana a Manda: Os Filhos Da Rede (Lisbon, 1989), Ch. 10
60. and David Birmingham, "Carnival at Luanda, " Journal of African History 29 (1988), 93-103.
61. Fair talks about how soccer marked the life cycles of men in the interwarperiod in Zanzibar and I would argue that music functioned in a similar way in Luanda. See Fair, Pastimes and Politics, 228.
62. Interview with Miguel Frances Santos Rodolfo "Kituxi" (April17, 2002). The hungu is related to the Brazilian berimbau, the centralinstrument used in capoeira. It is a bow instrument with a gourd resonator andmakes a plaintive sound.
63. Urbano de Castro's "Semba Lekalo" is a critique of young womenwho drink too much, while África Show's "As meninas de hoje"("The Girls of Today") has our narrator stalling a young woman'sadvances as he tells her that he does not want to get involved without talkingto her parents first, Iest he make problems for himself. The implication is that"girls today" are bolder about their sexuality than they used to be, but that the proper thing to do is consult her parents whether she wants that ornot. (Angola '70s: 1972-1973 (Paris, 1999), Compact disc liner notes . pp. 19, 23, 24) Elias Dia Kimuezo's "Diala Monzo" recounts a tale ofinfidelity, of "one woman" (the narrator's wife) who had "twomen, " "one inside, one outside" the house. Urbano's "Rosa Maria" and Artur Adriano "Belita" both sing of the love of one'slife and the devastation experienced when lost.
64. This may have had to do, in part, with the fact that several Portuguese-owned clubs in the city had dancing girls who did strip tease orcabaret shows. Pimentel told me this and then noted "at our parties thegirls just sang and danced." The musseques, particularly Bairro Operário and Marçal which were also the site of numerous clubs, were known for prostitution. See Dos Santos, ABC, esp. 243-46,
65. and Monteiro, A Família, 393-98. When the main site of musicalproduction and consumption in the musseques moved from backyard parties to morepublic clubs this then caused some tension for women. Interview with Pimentel.
66. Monteiro, "A Família Nos Musseques de Luanda, " 87, and Monteiro, "From Extended to Residual Family, " 216.
67. Interview with Ricardina "Dina" Carvalho Santos (April 6, 2001).
68. This song was translated from Kimbundu to Portuguese by Marie Francisca Jacinta of Radio National de Angola in Luanda, 15-17 April 2002. I am gratefulto her for her help.
69. Advayo Vunge, "Lourdes Van Dúnem: Sou a Personificaç ão Da Contradição, " Figuras & Negácios September 30, 2000.
70. Christine Messiant analyzes the social changes in Luandan society in thisperiod in her dissertation, "L'Angola Colonial, Histoire et Société, Les Prémisses du Mouvement Nationaliste" (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, 1983). She notes the developmentof a novo assimilado (new assimilated) class who, for the most part, grew up inthe interior, were schooled at Protestant missions, spoke local languages, andwho (aside from being educated and Christian) had experiences quite unlike thoseof the urban assimilados.
71. See Tali, Dissidências e Poder de Estado, II.