The First Case of the African Saudade

Listeners:  we go back to Africa this week, with a new theme to the show and a bunch of new music (new to you and me, that is...). Some new acquisitions have given me critical mass to showcase an underserved musical market from Africa:  songs and artists from former Portuguese colonies Angola and Cabo Verde.

The name of today's show is The First Case of the African Saudade. "Saudade" is a term frequently applied to some music from Brazil, and indeed the shared Portuguese tongue meant that musicians in Angola and Cabo Verde were more influenced by the music of Brazil than their counterparts in other West African nations. Saudade is a word that is notoriously impossible to accurately translate into English. The closest single-word translation is "sadness," but the point of saying "saudade" in Brazil is to suggest a richer emotional experience than pure uncut sadness... saudade also suggests the sweet sensation of pleasant memories, and that edge of sweetness is further communicated with light and sweet musical conventions that add complexity to the sad lyrics of pain and longing.

So some saudade came into the music of Angola and Cabo Verde through influence from the music scene in Brazil. But Angola and Cabo Verde, along with other Portuguese colonies in Africa, did have particular cause for sadness of their own during the period when this music was made:  unlike most sub-Saharan countries, who gained freedom from Colonial rule around the early 60s, colonies of Portugal were not granted independence. These twin reasons help to explain why musicians in Angola and Cabo Verde featured more sad song material than their counterparts in neighboring countries.

The first hour today is devoted to Angola, starting with some very rare Angolan singles from the 60s. We move into Cabo Verde at the midway point, with some heavy rotation from the late, great Cesaria Evora... aching, elegant, and rootsy as all get out. We wrap up today's set with a spicy latin and merengue set from the 70s Angola scene.