“Muáto Muá N’gola” (1967) – Lilly Tchiumba * Traditional * EP: Canta Angola * Produced by Emilio C. Mateus * Label: RCA Victor/A Voz Do Dono
The late Angolan singer Lilly Tchiumba sang in the Kimbundu language on her recordings, all of them from the sixties and seventies. In 1975, the year Angola became independent from Portugal, the Monitor label made most of her songs available on a collection called Angola: Songs of My People, now available via Smithsonian Folkways. Why did Tchiumba stop recording? Recent interviews with her brother, the painter Eleutério Sanches (who recorded an EP with her in the late sixties) express a general sadness about her career, specifically lamenting that her records have never been properly remastered after so many years. The song “Muáto Muá N’gola” (“women of Angola”), with its decidedly Portuguese sound, first appeared on a 1967 EP called Canta Angola, then reappeared on the Monitor album mentioned above, whose liner notes sum up its lyrical content as follows: “All women of Angola should be respected no matter what their condition or social standing and they have the right to fight for their position in society.”