On Dino D’Santago’s t-shirt, the five words written immediately set the tone: “Funaná is the new funk.” * The formula, effective, came to mind in South Korea in 2014. At the end of a concert in Ulsan, several spectators came to ask him about this music that they wanted to understand.
That same year, while playing in Central Park in New York City, he again found that funaná had the same effect on the audience and raised the same questions. “I replied that for me it was a revolutionary way of life, as funk had been for them,” explains the Portuguese singer of Cape Verde origin.
In a few years and a few projects, the rider in the thirties has registered funaná for his elders in another “sound aesthetic”, with success both artistically and commercially: his album Kriola went directly to second place in the sales rankings in the world. Portugal last year.
“The challenge was to bring contemporary, electronic, urban sounds that replace the acoustic of the instruments. The only elements that will never change are this traditional side of the writing of the lyrics and the binary rhythm that characterizes funaná,” he continues. his innovative, almost avant-garde approach.
The man knows his subject from the inside out. He grew up with this legacy passed down unconsciously from one generation to the next. At home, his father tossed the LPs from the Bulimundo group, especially Djâm Brancu Dja.
This album, released in 1980, marked the history of funaná by bringing it out of the shadows where it had been cast for so long. Until 1975, the year of the archipelago’s independence, the Portuguese colonial authorities had de facto banned it and oppressed those who practiced it – a situation similar to the situation of maloya on the French island of Reunion until nineteen.
The reasons? The expression of a dissatisfaction with the rules that the church has determined as an administration, for an Africanism that is observed with a certain contempt by the Europeans and the local elites. Especially since those who played it were not from the city, but peasants from the interior of the island of Santiago, the cradle of Funaná. A countryside synonymous with old-fashioned, far from refining the morna, salon music (entry, that, to the intangible heritage of Unesco 2020) was brought to the international stages in the late 20th century by Cesaria Evora.
Funa and Nana
In its traditional form, funaná is built around gaita (small diatonic accordion) and the ferrinhoen, a piece of sheet metal or iron bar scraped from a leaf and serves as the basis for an often improvised song, at a tempo that can be either slow. was fast. According to legend, his name comes from his parents named Funa and Nana. Less imaginatively, the author Felix Monteiro sees in it an obvious relationship with the word “fungagá”, which denotes a popular dance in Portugal.
For a long time it remained within this original framework, the accordionists became the main characters in this music genre who were doomed to exist in secret. Codé di Dona, author of the classic Fomi 47 on the consequences of the famine of 1947, is among the most popular. He should have taken the boat in 1959 to reach São Tomé, a Portuguese colony outside Gabon, to find work.
On the other hand, his friend Bitori, another great funaná master, made the journey and took back the valuable button instrument that he could not afford on his island of Santiago. Sema Lopi, who was also significant, did not escape this economic exile that affected many of his countrymen and left traces in Cape Verde society.
Emigration to the West, a massive phenomenon because it would represent one and a half times the population of the archipelago today estimated at more than 500,000 people, had a concrete impact on funaná: when Katchas returned to his homeland in 1977, he had in his luggage not just one album recorded with the group Broda two years earlier in Paris, but also keyboards that would transform Cape Verdean music.
With Zeca Di Nha Reinalda and a few others, he sets up Bulimundo and offers new arrangements for funaná, whose development should be seen in parallel with the wind of freedom blowing over Cape Verde after the independence acquired after the assassination of leader Amílcar Cabral. Say goodbye to acoustic instruments, make room for electrification. The alternative went immediately: the album Bulimundo was released in quick succession, allowing him to tour Europe and the United States.
In the wake of the fusion of Afro-funk influences, an entire scene suddenly appears, from Lisbon to Rotterdam, Rome or Boston, cities where large Cape Verdean communities live. Paulino Vieira, key player in this environment, Pedrinho, Elisio Gomes, Tchiss Lopes will help enrich the funana and open it up to the world with its synths, as some recent collections produced by illuminated excavators have reminded us. In France, the potential does not escape the recording industry, which in 1990 tries to repeat Lambada’s tides with Si Manera de Finaçon, a formation created by two ex-Bulimundo.
Back to the roots
A change of direction took shape at the end of the decade with the Ferro Gaita trio, authors of a return to the roots of funana: accordion and ferrinho were put back in the spotlight, but were accompanied by a bass, percussion … “It was a second revolution,” said one by the group’s founder in the booklet for Poor Me a Grog – The Funana Revolt in the 1990s Cabo Verde compilation.
To reconnect to the primary character of their music, you need to go back to the field. The archipelago, which has managed to emerge from its isolation introduced by geography, also sees the consequences: it does not escape the steamroller of globalization, which is beginning to gain momentum and cause concern.
Orlando Pantera is one of those who are currently struggling to preserve the authenticity of their cultural identity. The artist embodies this movement to such an extent that after his disappearance at the age of 33 in 2001, he is a model for “Pantera Generation” as Mayra Andrade among other things claims.
The context also provides an opportunity for alumni, such as Sema Lopi (whose work has been interpreted by a number of singers), Codé Di Dona and Bitori, to take advantage of the visibility that their music likes to finally record albums under their name. Respectively and show all their knowledge.
The new artists who appear in Cape Verde’s musical landscape during the 2000s and ride on funaná have inherited these successive currents, which are carried by conflicting winds at different times. Some synthesize it, like the singer Lura who is one of the few who can claim a national and international career. Others preferred to follow current trends and use technology to make new changes, digitize music by increasing the tempo. In this area that does not forget bling-bling codes, Ze Espahnol’s government is undoubtedly.
But there are many competitors to position themselves in this niche … which is similar to being mistaken there, both musically and vocally, with what makes dance Madagascar, on the other side of the African continent, where accordion present in music traditionally (played by Régis Gizavo , sideman for many Cape Verdean artists) has also been replaced with keyboards!
Festive has funaná not for everything emptied of its substance. He remains “the voice of resistance and resistance”, concludes Dino D’Santiago, no stranger to the fact that Madonna added the title Funana to her album Madame X 2020, the one who guided her during her Lisbon year. The tribute to the American star illustrates a little more the way traveled in almost half a century of this cultural practice that was forced underground and originated from a small island lost in the Atlantic. Music also moves volcanoes.
* Funaná is the new funk
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