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Folk Songs, Power, and African Memory: Listening to Colonial Angola in the 1950s

Publié le 23 avril 2026 – Mis à jour le 27 avril 2026

The presentation examines African sound recordings made during Portuguese colonial rule, focusing on songs recorded in rural Angola in the 1950s and now held in European institutions. These largely unknown archives, created by colonial agents using early sound technologies, are analysed from a decolonial perspective to explore how music reflects colonial power, resistance, and agency. Through an interdisciplinary and collaborative methodology combining archival research, oral history, ethnography, and collective listening with Angolan participants, the study reveals alternative narratives of the colonial past. It also highlights the importance of digitising these sound archives to preserve them and enable source communities to reclaim and reinterpret their sonic heritage.

Cristina Sá Valentim is a socio-cultural anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon. She is also a visiting professor at the University of Coimbra and a visiting researcher at the Africa Museum in Tervuren, Belgium. Her interdisciplinary research brings together social ecology, anthropology, postcolonial theory, ethnomusicology, and sound studies. She currently coordinates the project “Archives of Lived Songs”, which examines the links between colonial sound archives, power, and African agency and resistance in rural Angola from 1950 to 2020. In 2022, she published an award-winning book based on her PhD thesis on Cokwe songs and memories of forced labour in Angola. Her work has been widely published in international journals and edited volumes, focusing on colonial violence, gender, resistance, and the critical study of Angolan musical heritage.

Conférence organisée par l'Institut des Hautes Etudes de Belgique (IHEB)
Date(s)
Le 12 mai 2026
Lieu(x)

ULB - Campus du Solbosch, Institut de Sociologie, Salle Baugniet - 44 avenue Jeanne, 1050 Bruxelles