12 MAI 2026 | CONFERENCE Folk Songs, Power, and African Memory: Listening to Colonial Angola in the 1950s

Conférence donnée avec le soutien de l’Institut des hautes Etudes de Belgique

Mardi 12 mai 2026 à 18h00 – ULB, campus du Solbosch, Bâtiment S (44, av. Jeanne), rez de chaussée, Salle Baugniet

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 (Institut des Sciences sociales, Université de Lisbonne ; Université de Coimbra ; chercheuse associée, Africa Museum-Tervuren) 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.

Entrée libre, mais réservation obligatoire à l’adresse suivante : marie-alexis.colin@ulb.be