Angolan-Portuguese singer & rapper Pongo - recently
featured as part of NME’s 100 Essential New Artists For 2020 - today releases
‘Canto’, the latest single lifted from her forthcoming new EP, ‘Uwa’, due out
on February 7, 2020 via Caroline International. ‘Canto’ follows lead-off single
‘Quem Manda No Mic’, supported by BBC 1Xtra (Jamz Supernova) and added straight
to the B-list at BBC 6Music alongside Pongo’s debut run of UK headline shows,
including a rowdy, packed out London date at Redon. ‘Uwa’ - meaning ‘step’ in
her Angolan language of Kimbundo - follows Pongo’s 6Music-supported debut EP
‘Baia’ - which has since been streamed over 6 million times and counting, also
spawning remixes from 20syl and Anoraak (issued via Kitsuné). Stream ‘Canto’
here, and watch the new video - filmed on location in Lisbon - here.
Whilst the ‘Uwa’ EP marks the first time Pongo raps in
English - she’s fluent both in Portuguese and Kimbundo - the lyrics of ‘Canto’
are delivered in Portunol, a blend of Portuguese with elements of Spanish. A
celebration of her turbulent path to a career in music - with a title that
translates quite simply as ‘I sing’ - ‘Canto’ pitches Pongo’s sandy vocals
above the Latin rhythms of mambo, with results that feel both futuristic and
borderless. Speaking about the track, Pongo says; "This song describes the
happiness I feel while making music. I’m trying to use latin rhythms and their
particular ambience. I love mixing and discovering.”
It’s a mindset captured by the striking new visuals for
‘Canto’, directed by Parisian Felix Dol Maillot, in which Pongo performs in the
surf and above the rooftops of Senegal’s coastline. Speaking about the video -
filmed over the course of a single 16 hour day-to-night shoot - Dol Maillot
says; “‘Canto’ is a track without boundaries. Across the track Pongo sings
& raps seamlessly in different languages, telling us that music is
everything in her life. I felt it was interesting to shoot in locations which
aren’t easy to place geographically, with just Pongo front & centre,
singing and dancing. The power of this song made me feel it would be
interesting to have lots of low angle shots with just Pongo against the sky
alongside some overhead shots to give an aerial look. That’s how the idea of
the mirrored staircases came up. I wanted Pongo to be performing on top of
something strong visually, but something that could also blend into different
locations and absorb the atmosphere around her.”
Originally hailing from Angola’s capital city of Luanda, as
a kid Pongo was forced to flee to Europe with her family to escape its lengthy,
harrowing civil war. Eventually settling in Portugal in a city just north of
Lisbon with a very small African-immigrant population, a young Pongo experienced
prolonged racist abuse whilst completing her schooling in the area. Already
seeking solace from a disturbing present tense by retreating into the music,
dance & slang words of her former life in Luanda, Pongo’s route to becoming
one of Kuduro’s fast-rising young stars was completed by the closest of near
misses. Falling several storeys out of a window as the result of a prank gone
horribly wrong - “I was always doing some kind of stupid acrobatics” - and
somehow escaping with only a badly broken ankle, Pongo was forced to catch a
train each week to meet with a physiotherapist for treatment. Stopping every
week at the city’s Quelez Station, Pongo came into the orbit of the Denon
Squad, a group of boys practising kuduro dance on the streets of one of Lisbon’s
largest African communities. Soon rapping over their routines - in defiance of
her father, himself a kuduro dancer back in Angola - a tape of Pongo’s
recordings made its way into the hands of Lisbon-based club night turned kuduro
collective Buraka Som Sistema. Pongo (taking her artist name in tribute to
feminist Congolese singer, M’Pongo Love) then went on to make her debut on
their ‘Black Diamond’ album, alongside the likes of M.I.A. and Kano.
With Pongo now choosing to live in Lisbon’s Quelez neighbourhood,
and still sporting the large scar across her calf which remains from her
death-defying accident, you sense it’s more than just coincidental that the
kuduro movement took its name from an Angolan slang word meaning ‘hard-ass’.
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