CITY LIFE
In Brazil’s largest city — an ever-evolving metropolis of intertwined cultures — diasporas from across the globe use music, art and dance to make their mark
I’m still two blocks away when I hear the samba beat, subverted by a deep, assertive bass. At the far end of a pedestrian lane paved in white tiles, a Beaux Arts villa called Casa de Francisca glows red and purple from within.
Its tall second-storey windows are flung open to reveal hundreds of party-goers. Behind the villa, there’s São Paulo’s historic centre, the silhouetted at night.
Once home to a musical instrument shop, then a radio broadcaster, before becoming an empty shell, the building now has more people inside than it’s ever hosted before. When I enter, it feels as though they’re testing the structural integrity of its Corinthian pillars. A fusion of black, white, mixed, Indigenous, macho and gender-fluid people, the crowd bounce and shout out lyrics, white shirts billowing, trilbies toppling. Their eyes are on the DJ booth where Angola-born writer-musician Kalaf Epalanga is spinning kizomba — a sweeping genre embracing Afrobeats, Portuguese pop, fervent hip-hop and plaintive soul. When Kalaf eases into a slower tempo, couples pair off in sweaty synchronicity, or make out under the tiered chandelier. Two tall mirrors on the stage reflect the scene back to me.
Emerging from Angolan clubs in southwestern Africa during the war-torn 1980s, kizomba culture has rippled through the Afro-Portuguese diaspora like waves across the Atlantic. It’s difficult to define because it’s considered an attitude — a matrix of Latin rhythms, new wave synthesisers and early techno, but also fashion bravado and survival spirit that’s found a footing in São Paulo. The Afro-pop Cape Verdean crooner Djodje is kizomba; so, too, is the Rio-based Afrobeats DJ Joss Dee. The literal meaning of kizomba in the Kimbundu language, one of several spoken in Angola, is ‘party’.
In this city of around 12 million — the world’s largest Portuguese-speaking centre and Brazil’s most populated city by a country mile — Kalaf has a huge fanbase. And this celebration of kizomba, held in partnership with Kalaf’s fellow artist, friend and countryman Nástio Mosquito, is their way of testing the waters for a permanent Kizomba Design Museum in the city, with Casa de Francisca one possible home for it. The pair are clearly on to something.
After his set, we sit down together and Kalaf puts it to me like this: “The African diaspora in the Western world take whatever jobs are available from the bottom of the pyramid,” he drawls. “They’re immigrants, invisible all week long. No one knows their story. But come Friday they’ll get their best outfits from the dry cleaner, call the barber, take pride in their presentation. That’s why we call it kizomba design.” Násti
