If you're still looking for a sultry summer soundtrack, definitely give Chalo Correia's 'Akuá Musseque' a chance. Correia is a singer-songwriter, born in Luanda at the end of the nineteen sixties and raised in the civil war torn Angola of the nineteen seventies.
After the Portuguese handed over power to the Angolans in 1975, Dr. Agostinho Neto's MPLA, which was supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba, and the South-African backed UNITA of Jonas Savimbi and Antonio da Costa Fernandes began to champion each other in a bid to take control of the country. In 1991, president and MPLA chairman José Eduardo dos Santos and UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, signed the so-called Bicesse Agreements, the first of a whole series of peace agreements. Savimbi was murdered in 2002, dos Santos eventually resigned as president in 2017, and now both parties officially share political power. The only active rebel group remaining in Angola is now FLEC, fighting for the secession of Cabinda, an Angolan enclave wedged between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Congo-Brazzaville.
Since the MPLA was in control of the capital Luanda, Correia's youth was mainly influenced by revolutionary bands such as Os Merengues and Os Kiezos. In the early nineties Chalo moved to Portugal where he honed his skills on the guitar and harmonica. 'Akuá Musseque' contains 7 tracks in which Correia plays around with contemporary versions of traditional Angolan genres like semba (the Angolan predecessor of Brazilian samba), rebita ('Filho Do Mundo'), rumba ('Nga Mbaxi') and kazucuta (opener 'Chica Dyá Makongo'). In the track list all self-penned, except for 'Nga Mbaxi', for which Chalo drew inspiration from 'Caduque', a nineteenth century love song, included in 'Textos Africanos De Expressão Portuguesa', a work by Angolan author and folklorist Oscar Ribas. Excellent alternative to modern but sometimes slightly aggressive sounding Angolan genres like kuduro and kizomba.