Kuduro - Origins

Origins

The roots of kuduro can be traced to the late 1980s when producers in Luanda, Angola started mixing African percussion samples with simple soca rhythms to create a style of music then known as "batida". European and American electronic music had begun appearing in the market, which attracted Angolan musicians and inspired them to incorporate their own musical styles. Young producers began adding heavy African percussion to both European and American beats, which resulted in what was then called Batida. In the early 90's, Angolan clubs started playing it and the youngsters started to create new dance moves to follow what the DJs were dropping.

The name itself is a word with a specific meaning to location in the Kimbundu language, which is native to the northern portion of Angola. Kuduro dancing combines soca, semba, and zouk. In Europe western house and techno producers mixed it with house and techno. As Vivian Host points out in her article, despite the common assumption that "world music" from non-Western countries holds no commonalities with Western modern music, Angolan kuduro does contain "elements in common with punk, deep tribal house, and even Daft Punk." It is thus the case that cultural boundaries and limitations within the musical spectrum are constantly shifting and being redefined. And though Angolan kuduro reflects an understanding and, further, an interpretation of Western musical forms, the world music category that it fits under tends to reject the idea of Western musical imperialism. The larger idea here is that advancements in technology and communications and the thrust of music through an electronic medium have made transcending cultural and sonic musical structures possible. According to Blentwell Podcasts, kuduro is a "mixture of house, hip-hop, and ragga elements," which illustrates how this is at once an Angolan-local and global music. Indeed, this "musical cross-pollination", as Vivian Host calls it, represents a local appropriation of global musical forms, such that the blending of different musics creates the music of a "new world."