If this doesn’t put a smile on your face, then nothing will! I can say with some confidence that this is the first music I’ve ever posted from the tiny islands of São Tomé and Príncipe.
Áfrican Negra are one of the first and better known bands from the African islands in the armpit of Africa, off the coast of Gabon.
They were formed 50 years ago by a butcher called Horacio, and his friend Emilio Pontes. The authorities found their band name too controversial so they were first called Conjunto Milando, and then Girasol (Sunflower) until independence in 1975.
Their style, featuring fast rhythms and syncopated beats, is known as puxa: a blend of soukous and zouk, its Caribbean counterpart, that shows the influence of the country’s history as a Portuguese colony.
It combines the sultry São Tomé rumba with delicious shoots of Ghanaian highlife to create a hybrid called ‘Mama Djumba’ by their fans.
To the islanders, their sound symbolises the first years of independence, making them a national institution synonymous with the euphoria of the Carnation Revolution and the freedoms that followed.
Vence Vitória is one of the great hits of the África Negra orchestra, originally released in 1981. To my ears it’s a close relative of the zouk music of the French Antilles, which I discovered when I went to St Lucia in the 1980s and discovered an album by Kassav in a local record shop in Castries.
Their signature song, Zouk La Se Sel Medikamen Nou Ni, (which I have always assumed to translate as “Zouk is the only medicine we need”) is still a favourite.
This isn’t quite the same but it shares the fast beat and syncopated rhythms of zouk, with perhaps more of an African influence (as you would expect).