Pongo, kuduro singer: “My music is a trench from which to defend oneself from the world”.


Shortly after his eighth birthday, Pongo (Luanda, 1992) and his family emigrated to Portugal, fleeing the living conditions of a devastated Angola after 25 years of civil war. Left behind were friends, family and a strong native culture that survived four centuries of Portuguese colonialism and slavery with little miscegenation. But life in Europe turned out to be far from easy for a migrant family with few resources. They landed in Lisbon in 2000 and experienced first-hand the unfair treatment of racial segregation. Like most Angolans in the Portuguese capital, they settled in a poor neighbourhood close to their people. There they stayed for several years in a flat with two rooms for six people, but close to the community that, even today, keeps the Angolan culture alive in the diaspora.

Pongo’s earliest memories are linked to dance. Although she always wanted to be a professional dancer, it wasn’t until she was 15 that she found a place where she could express herself freely with her body. That place was the Lisbon train station where, by chance, she met other dancers with whom she shared culture and generation. In that underground scene she found her place and many friendships that would help her to become who she is today: one of the references that is revolutionizing Afro-Portuguese music.

What remains of that childhood in Angola in the Pongo of today?

Absolutely everything. Although I later came to understand that the political and social context in which I grew up was not idyllic, the memories I have are all beautiful. They are the memories of a happy child surrounded by her people, her tradition, her culture. Those memories are the most beautiful thing I keep in me and they are the pillars on which I stand today as a person and as an artist. The vision I have of Angola at that time is that it was my land, the place where I wanted to be.

The reality of Angola at the time you left was very different from the European reality.

The change was very difficult. Not only because we had to leave our lives there, but because the integration here was also hard. It was not easy at all to enter Portuguese culture and society. Although I was always an outgoing and friendly child, at school I suffered quite a lot from the difficulties I had to deal with.iscrimination. I wanted to make friends, but many of those children only spoke to me to call me black. They thought that people in my country wore loincloths. It was quite hard until I adjusted. I didn’t get any help from the teachers. I told them what I was going through but they did nothing. So I started to defend myself alone and by force. I tried to explain the reality of Angola, the games I knew, my culture, but they didn’t show any interest and kept on harassing me. From then on, when they called me black, I slapped them.

For fear of this exclusion, your family decided to continue living within the Angolan community in Lisbon?

The truth is that there wasn’t a lot of mixed race in that context and maybe that’s also why it was harder for me to integrate. I grew up most of my adolescence closed in that community. My parents wanted to follow that life and my sisters and I lived it with them. On the bright side, that life context, a bit nostalgic, made me continue to live the atmosphere of my homeland. It marked in me, even more, the will to return to Angola and to keep our culture alive.

The starting point of your career was in 2007, when you had the opportunity to meet the band Buraka Som Sistema. How did a 15-year-old girl become the vocalist of the most representative band of kuduro at that time?

It was an accumulation of coincidences. One day, walking through Lisbon, I came across a group of artists dancing at the train station. When I saw them I couldn’t believe it, they were dancing kuduro. For me, that moment was a before and after. I had found my world. They were people my age, Angolans and they were living the same situation as me. I went with them, they invited me to dance and that same day they welcomed me as part of the group. You could say that’s when it all started.

In addition to dancing, in this group they also sang to accompany the movement. Every time we came up with new music, they used to send it to Buraka Som Sistema because one of them knew one of the members of the band. One day we went with them to a studio in the suburbs of Amadora in Lisbon and it so happened that one of the vocalists had not been able to come to the session. So they invited us to sing some backing vocals to fill out the recording. I wasn’t a singer, but I really liked kuduro and, of course, I sang it too. The next day, dancing at the station, I sang a couple of verses while we were dancing. Someone recorded it and, without me knowing that, they sent it to the Buraka. After some time, I got a call from the band saying that they had heard my music and my voice and that they would love for me to cover for the vocalist who had left the band.

That’s when you wrote the song that would catapult you as a singer.

Yes. I joined the band and in the first few days I introduced them to Wegue Wegue, which later became one of the band’s best known songs, with millions of plays on the internet. The day I presented it to them in the studio I was quite nervous and shy, but I sang it and they liked it. From there, I learned the whole repertoire of the band to be able to do the tour they had planned and for which they were without a vocalist. We did Portugal from north to south while continuing to develop the song I had written.

That song, called Kalemba, was released in 2008 and it was a total explosion on the net and off it. What did all that success mean for that young Pongo?

I had just started my musical career when I was 16 and the first song I did was a huge hit. Like all teenagers, I was quite naive. I didn’t quite understand the scope of it all. But even though I still couldn’t quite understand myself and my feelings, I had a strength that made me feel capable of anything on a professional level. But outside the scene, everything was different. We still had needs at home and, on top of that, my father was a very violent person.

At that time, I was still growing up, but I had a sense of Angola, of my family, of my land. All that union, all that love that I had kept was unravelling because of what I was experiencing at home. Dance and music became a refuge for me at that time in my life. I wanted to help my family with the opportunity I had to work with Buraka, but soon after, I was left aside for reasons that were never explained to me.

There was quite a long period of time from the time you were kicked out of the band until you started your solo career. What happened?

Then I had to deal with a lot of problems in my life. Financial, family and academic. I got caught up in a big loop of sadness that left me with no desire for anything. But I woke up and I started to work hard for my solo project, to make my music. At the same time I had to raise my three children.I was alone with my sisters. In a way, I was not able to live my adolescence to the fullest. However, all those experiences made me much stronger and more capable. Luckily, I was able to look on the bright side and not give up. That’s not to say I don’t have my demons from the past, but I’ve learned to keep them at bay. But look, after 10 years of hard work, with a lot of stealing and cheating in between, I’ve managed to be who I am.

Has there been that much cheating in your way?

I’ll tell you the most serious one. I spent years fighting for my rights to Buraka’s most successful song. In that sense, I had to accept that the success of that song was taken by others and I remained anonymous. My song was touring the world, but I was still at home in Lisbon and no one knew that I had written it.

What are the main influences of your solo music?

One of the great inspirations I have to create my music is my life as a young man in Angola and all the atmosphere that I continued to live in my community in Lisbon. All that I keep in my memory is the main engine that helps me to keep believing in myself and in what I do. Life is worth living and Kuduro is the trench from which I fight. Although my struggle began at home, the world outside is even more hostile.

As for stricter references, my musical education is closely linked to the traditional music of Angola: the zouk, the semba… You can’t understand Pongo without that mixture of sounds from my homeland. Then, on my own path, I also follow R&B and old school rap closely. In part, I see rap and kuduro as parallel stories. Two musics that grew up in ghettos, one in America and the other in Africa, but both marginalized.

Kuduro was born in Angola between the late eighties and early nineties in a very different context than the one we live in today in Europe. What is it that keeps your music from all that?

Mainly, the essence and the flow. The variations and the dynamics of the style. But among all, I think the attitude and how we face the music is one of the most important factors that make kuduro what it is, a music with the energy of a revolution. Even from our scene we address social issues with dance, strength and joy. Even if it’s to talk about problems. When we dance happily about our problems, it means that we accept them and that is the first step for us to be able to deal with the difficulties in our lives.

So, contrary to what you may read from some critics, is there a message in kuduro?

For me, kuduro is a message. If we have to hear all the bad things that happen to us in a dark context, the shock is greater and it awakens sad feelings in us that nobody wants to feel. We do lament kuduro, which is a sub-genre within kuduro. We tell sad things, but with an energy that doesn’t let you break down. People understand it, they know there is a story behind that woman singing to them from the stage. Kuduro is human and when you listen to it, it’s impossible not to feel it.

On the international scene, we can see that Afro-Portuguese music is taking on a certain prominence beyond the Portuguese-speaking countries. It’s going so far that you even played at the Elysée Palace in front of the French President, Emmanuel Macron.

Yes, and some very funny things happened. For the record, for me, a concert is a concert, whether I’m singing in the suburbs of Lisbon or in front of the president of France. But even so, I was at the Elysée Palace and that was imposing. Shortly before going on stage, I was told that Macron wanted to have a little chat with me and, to tell the truth, it was all very natural. I even taught the first lady, Brigitte Macron, some basic kuduro dancing steps. I also tried to teach the prime minister how to pronounce the “R” in kuduro, but I didn’t succeed (laughs). The whole Macron family danced and for me it was an honor, a unique experience. If it wasn’t for the pandemic, we would have gone to Angola in May 2020 for President Macron’s meeting with the Angolan Prime Minister João Lourenço. I was going to be in charge of the presentation between the two, but everything was cut short because of COVID.

On the subject of the coronavirus, how did you deal with the pandemic on a professional level?

It was extremely complicated. I became very depressed. I had been struggling a lot in the years before the pandemic to build a career and this was a very hard blow to all my work, to all my effort. I had just released my last single, UWA, with an incredible music video shot in Senegal. I had the intention of showing, once again, African culture to the world at a very high level. But then the pandemic hit and everything went down the drain. All the concerts were cancelled just when my career was starting to pick up steam.

I had a lot of doubts and in fact I think it was a turning point. I went through a personal metamorphosis because of the shock we had to live through. I lost a lot of weight, I had a hard time getting my spirits up. People were confined at home and I had to adapt my show.em>to those conditions, but I needed the live performance, I needed the stage. I can’t live without that energy that the people I sing to transmit to me: everything real. It was difficult to move to the virtual, but once again I had to stand up and adapt to the circumstances.

This year, your only visit to Spain will be on August 28th at the Sons da Canteira festival in O Porriño (Pontevedra). What are we going to find at the concert? Can you listen to a kuduro concert sitting on a chair?

Of course you can, people will have to dance, they won’t be able to resist. Even if it’s from a chair. When I go on stage, I’m going to give everything I would like to receive. The people who go I know that, seated or not, are going to be filled with the energy that we’re going to send them from the stage. We’re going to have fun, dance, feel love and share the good energy. We all need hope and I try to bring some of that in these hard times. It’s not healthy that we’ve had to be so long with this sad energy. It takes courage to get out of this cage we are locked in. Courage to grow and embrace hope. We will return to our normal lives. With kuduro and with energy.

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