Following the excellent compilation album 'Léve Léve', highlighting music from the small African island state of Sao Tome and Principe, Les Disques Bongo Joe now presents this re-release of 'Maguidala', a rare 1985 LP by Pedro Lima, who passed away in 2019.
Lima began his musical career when, as a teenager, he joined family orchestra Os Leonenses, and later became one of the few artists from Sao Tome and Principe who managed to record in Angola for labels like N'Gola and Merengue, and even in Portugal, where in the nineteen eighties he collaborated with the Iefe Discos label.
Lima's outspoken political opinions and the support he often expressed for the revolutionary socialist Movement for the Liberation of Sao Tome and Principe (MLSTP), the party that came to power after independence in 1975, soon earned him the nickname 'A voz do povo de Sao Tome' ("the voice of the people of Sao Tome").
Even though 'Maguidala' counts only four tracks: two puxas (Angola meets Sao Tome) and two rumbas, the highly danceable nine-minute title track 'Maguidala' alone makes this album more than worth the purchase.
After his death in 2019, Pedro Lima received a state funeral in his homeland Sao Tome, paid for by ex-president Manuel Pinto da Costa and attended by thousands of grieving countrymen. African gem!