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 Featured artist.
BONGA KWENDA is a superstar throughout Europa and Africa. He has recorded 17 albums in a 28-year career, and has been the subject of at least four compilations and countless re-issues.
Bonga's life is inextricably linked to Angola's struggle for freedom from colonial domination and the continuing struggle for a stable, comfortable, post-colonial existance. In this regard, his career bears a striking parallel to that of Thomas Mapfumo from Zimbabwe.
Bonga first came to prominence as an athlete, initially as a world-class 400 meter champion who set a record he held for ten years, and later as a star on the great Benfica 1960s.
Portugal was then ruled by the repressive right-wing Salazar government. Like the regime of Generalissimo Francisco Franco in Spain, it was a Nazi-allied government which managed to remain in power in Western Europe well into the 1970s. Angolans were restricted in every manner possible, including travel. They were also generally denied Portuguese citizenship. Bonga's status as star athlete allowed him freedom of movement, which he used to carry messages between exiled freedom fighters and compatriots at home. As the movement for independence heated up, Bonga was forced into exile himself, first in Rotterdam, then in Paris. It was in Rotterdam in 1972 that he recorded his first record, "Angola '72", and adapted the name Bonga Kwenda.
While living in Paris in the 1970s Bonga recorded many excellent albums and his songs feature on numerous compilations including the track 'Diarabi' on Manu Dibango's Wakafrika. He was the first to sing 'Sodade', now made famous by Cesaria Evora.
Bonga sings in calao, a language that mixes Portuguese and Kimbundu. As well as singing in his very distinctive rather rough voice he plays the dizanka, an Angolan bamboo strummer and occasionally the puita, a fairly rarely heard friction drum. His songs have Brazilian influences as well as indigenous Angolan Semba sounds and he has worked with musicians from several different countries. He stayed on in Paris and Lisbon after Angola's independence and was critical of the post-colonial set-up in his home country.
Recordings Bonga has made include Roca de Jindugo, Paz em Angola, Swinga, Swinga:The Voice of Angola 102% Live, Mulemba Xangola and O Melhor.
In 2003 Bonga recorded a great new album, Kaxexe. It contains both pleading heartfelt melodies and typical Angolan beats.
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