Waldemar Bastos
Waldemar Bastos (born January 4, 1954 in São Salvador do Congo , † August 9, 2020 in Lisbon ) was an Angolan singer and composer .
biography
Bastos was born in São Salvador do Congo in 1954. His musical activity began at the age of seven when he learned to play the accordion . His parents worked as mobile nurses, whom he often accompanied. He learned so much from the traditional music of Angola, but also from the emerging pop culture. With his first band, Jovial, Waldemar played pop, tangos, waltzes and other dance music. The Portuguese political police locked him up briefly because he spoke out against the situation in the country.
After Angola's independence in 1975, things did not get any easier for Bastos. Many artists were murdered, either because they withdrew from political collaboration with the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA) or União Nacional para a Independência Total de Angola (UNITA), or because they made the wrong decision. Waldemar Bastos was very much courted by both sides, but eluded both. When he visited Portugal with a cultural delegation in 1982, he fled. He used the exile to develop musically. He made his first recordings in Brazil. Bastos' breakthrough and international fame only came with the album Pretaluz , which was produced in New York by the musician Arto Lindsay and was released on the 1998 Luaka Bop label. Its founder, David Byrne , had become aware of the Angolan's music a few years earlier. The compilation Adventures In Afropea 3: Telling Stories To The Sea , published in 1995, contained a song by Waldemar Bastos. Shortly after the end of the civil war in Angola in 2002, Bastos gave a celebrated and sold-out concert of national importance with these songs in Luanda “as the musical guest of honor of the government” in the national stadium.
Waldemar Bastos succumbed to the age of 66 of a cancer .
Discography
- 1988: Estamos Juntos
- 1990: Angola Minha Namorada
- 1992: Pitanga Madura
- 1998: Pretaluz
- 2005: Renascence
- 2010: Classics of My Soul
Web links
- Waldemar Bastos' website ( memento from January 12, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
- Waldemar Bastos at Discogs (English)
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bastos, Waldemar |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Angolan singer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 4th January 1954 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Sao Salvador do Congo |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 9, 2020 |
| Place of death | Lisbon |