The Third Case of the Sultry Night at Club Safari

Today we go back to a pair of former Portugese colonies in Africa:  Cape Verde and Angola.

The musical traditions from these countries do not follow typical models in West Africa, which flow from Jazz and Cuban influence into rumba, soukouss, highlife, and afrobeat. These countries pulled more influence from Caribbean sounds like merengue and bolero, creating in each country a unique (and especially sultry sounding) musical scene. 

In Cape Verde, popular tastes in the 60s ran to uptempo coladeras along with sad and slow mornas. These forms will be familiar to any fan of Cesara Evoria, who repopularized these traditional sounds for international audiences in the 1990s. In Angola the 60s and 70s included local hybrid sounds like semba and rebita. In both countries one hears a greater influence of Brazilian music, and unusual arrangements using indigenous percussion alongside otherwise scarce instruments in African popular music, such as the clarinet.

The show opens with old-timey sounds from Cape Verde before diving into a survey of funky 70s sounds from Angola. I send out the first hour with some garage rock groove from the funky 70s scene in Cape Verde.

The second hour today is focused on slower, more psychedelic sounds. We start the hour with some traditional Cape Verdean mornas before we move into some psychedelic grooves from both countries. Several songs here with a jam band sound from Cape Verdean band N'Kassa Cobra.