Ngola Ritmos

Ngola Ritmos
Origin Luanda, Angola Angola
Genres Angola folk music
Semba
Years active 1947–1960s

Ngola Ritmos is an Angolan traditional music band, created around 1947 by Liceu Vieira Dias, Domingos Van-Dúnem, Mário da Silva Araújo, Manuel dos Passos and Nino Ndongo. They sang kimbundu music with guitar and small percussion.

In the 1950s, the band comprised Liceu, Nino, Amadeu Amorim, José Maria, Euclides Fontes Pereira, José Cordeira, Lourdes Van-Dúnem and Belita Palma. Their lamentos were inspired by the daily chronicles or funeral laments sung by bessangana women and their sembas by popular dances.

While such songs as Mbiri Mbiri, Kolonial, Palamé or Muxima have been covered by numerous singers, recordings by Ngola Ritmos are very rare. Muxima and Django Ué were recorded in Luanda. Most of the members of Ngola Ritmos were nationalist militants, Liceu, a founding member of the MPLA liberation movement and Amadeu were arrested in 1959 and deported to the Tarrafal prison in Cape Verde, to return only ten years later. Nevertheless, the band lasted until the late sixties, recording the song Nzage in Lisbon.

Marissa J. Moorman, Dueling Bands and Good Girls: Gender, Music, and Nation in Luanda's Musseques, 1961-1974, International Journal of African Historical Studies (2004)

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