Semba

Semba is Angolan duple-meter dance music with a springy syncopated rhythm centred on the dancer's hips. Acoustic guitar lays down simple repeated patterns over an unusually active bass line that bounces up and down rather than walking. Vocals carry Portuguese-language lyrics with controlled vibrato and frequent emotional restraint. Urbanised semba added electric bass, keyboards and drum machines for dance-hall use; the rhythmic feel — the connection between body sway and beat — remained the constant.

Semba developed in the Angolan colonial period as a fusion of African and Portuguese elements, becoming the dominant urban dance music of Luanda by the 1950s. During and after the war of independence (1961-1975), it functioned as a vehicle for political expression — Bonga's Mona Ki Ngi Xica (1972), recorded while he was in exile, became a totemic protest song. Brazilian samba is widely understood to descend from semba, brought across the Atlantic by enslaved Angolans.

Lock onto the bass line first — the up-and-down jumping motion is the rhythmic engine, and your hips will follow almost automatically. The hi-hat or upper-register percussion blends Portuguese and African rhythmic logic in a way that doesn't quite resemble either parent.

Bonga's Mona Ki Ngi Xica (1972) is the canonical track. The album Angola 72 captures the politically charged exile period.

Bonga, then a sprinter on the Portuguese national track team, recorded Mona Ki Ngi Xica while in political exile in the Netherlands; Portuguese colonial authorities banned the record, which only enhanced its underground impact.