Cristina Sá Valentim
Engaging colonial sound archives: a comprehensive and shared listening approach to an Angolan folk song
Etnográfica, 29 (3), 645-662
Cristina Valentim publicou o artigo “Engaging colonial sound archives: a comprehensive and shared listening approach to an Angolan folk song“ na revista Etnográfica, secção Multimodal.
This article draws on anthropology, ethnomusicology, history, sound studies, and postcolonial theory to engage with a Cokwe song recorded in the 1950’s in northeastern Angola. Muambuâmbua song addresses desertion from colonial contract or forced labor, a practice often depicted in historiography as a straightforward act of anticolonial resistance. However, by analyzing this song through a methodology that I term “comprehensive and shared listening”, I uncover meanings of flight from forced labor that move beyond this narrow framework. The study combines archival research with multi-sited, collaborative ethnographic fieldwork in Portugal and Angola (2014-1016). The song is examined in dialogue with diverse archival sources and narratives shared by interlocutors. This approach reveals how sensitive experiences shaped by unequal power relations cannot be fully understood through sound recordings or visual and written documents alone. By engaging with sound through alternative modes of listening – the archive itself and to people who inhabit its histories – this article exposes hidden layers of meaning about colonial domination, African resistance, and agency, and contributes to the decolonial reactivation of colonial sound archives.
Keywords: Cokwe music – Angola, colonial sound archives, power, forced/contract labor, research methodology
Palavras-chave: música cokwe – Angola, arquivos sonoros coloniais, poder, trabalho forçado/contratado, metodologias de investigação
Referência: Cristina Sá Valentim, «Engaging colonial sound archives: a comprehensive and shared listening approach to an Angolan folk song», Etnográfica [Online], 29 (3) | 2025, posto online no dia 11 novembro 2025, consultado o 15 abril 2026. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/etnografica/19470; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/154s3