MUSIC PORTAL
The role of Mozambican music as an element in building national identity is consensually recognised. The existence of countless traditional instruments, songs and dances, arising from the great mosaic of cultures the country offers, has led to many traditional musical elements being incorporated into Mozambican popular music, markedly enriching its specificity. As a result, Mozambique has a very rich and diverse historical legacy of musical production. However, until now there was no place, institution or other initiative that gave systematic access to the diverse cultural and historical heritage of Mozambican music and musicians. Moreover, many of the leading musicians of national music are of advanced age, or have already died, leaving an enormous body of historical and cultural knowledge unrecorded. All these reasons made the creation of a Mozambican music portal imperative: a publicly accessible, free-of-charge place offering detailed information on Mozambican music and musicians, including photos, videos, interviews, documents, instruments, biographies and a database. All Mozambicans will benefit from the portal, especially music lovers; the cultural and musical teaching academy, which has at its disposal essential material for preparing its educational content; and musicians, teachers and music researchers, who will thus be able to better contextualise the environment in which they work.
In 2018 and 2019, research was carried out on Mozambican music with a view to conceiving and staging what would become two shows entitled “No tempo dos tocadores” and “Os tocadores de agora”, which can be seen at www.tp50.org. Creating these two shows required extensive collection of audiovisual materials and testimonies relating to popular music of the colonial era and present-day popular music, including a series of interviews with various musicians. These interviews are extremely important documents, as they were conducted with people who lived through the most important moments in the history of our music. Countless materials were also collected in the form of photos, articles and other texts. Taken together, the undertaking inspired the desire to systematise all the information and make it available to the general public, thus preserving the memory of national music and musicians.
The effort made so far has relied on voluntary work and free resources provided by the institutions, individuals and groups involved. This initiative was created by a group of people whose founders included Chenny Wa Gune, Hortêncio Langa, Roberto Chitsondzo, António Prista and Luís Loforte, among others.
“The Portal is the universe of Mozambican music, where music and musicians see themselves, project themselves and make themselves known to the globalised world.” – Luís Loforte, Curator
“The Portal is a showcase of Mozambique’s music and culture that will benefit society with cultural content, such as national music, dance and instruments – their origin and what they are today.” – Cheny Wa Gune, Curator
“The idea of the Portal is to bring together, and make visible, an enormous potential that goes about hidden and scattered, and the benefit is similar to the saying “If you want to go far, let us go together.” – António Prista, Curator
“The Portal is a generational convergence of cultural creators and of the tools that distinguish them but, at the same time, bring them together. The Portal is a sung, played and danced journey of incalculable value!” – Ruben Morgado, Designer
www.portaldamusica.org.mz
