Semba

Semba is Angola's emblematic urban dance music and the direct ancestor of kizomba. Born in Luanda's musseques (townships) from the older massemba tradition, whose name it carries, semba is a guitar-led couple-dance music sung in Kimbundu and Portuguese: interlocking lead and rhythm guitars, dikanza scraper, hungu gourd and hand percussion support call-and-response vocals on love, daily hardship, colonial repression and national pride. Groups such as *Ngola Ritmos* modernised the form in the 1950s, and singers including *David Zé*, *Urbano de Castro*, *Carlos Burity* and the exiled *Bonga* made semba the soundtrack of Angolan identity before and after independence in 1975.