Chapter 06
The Conjuntos Built Puxa, and New Voices Keep Rewriting the Island Studio
6 min
Puxa is the sound of a band pulling dancers forward. A strong bass line repeats with enough stability to carry several guitars. Rhythm guitar divides the bar into bright strokes. Lead guitar answers the singer with runs influenced by music from Congo, Angola and farther afield. Drums and percussion increase pressure. Backing singers do more than sweeten the lead: they return phrases, build local harmony and give the chorus collective authority.
What to listen for
The style emerged inside intense listening. Records and broadcasts brought Angolan semba and merengue, Congolese rumba and soukous, Cape Verdean coladeira, Caribbean compas and cadence, Brazilian music and other dance languages. São Tomé musicians selected techniques and joined them to local rhythm and Forro phrasing. Puxa is the result of that authorship. It is not a generic label for African guitar music.
Six bands, six kinds of pressure
África Negra has the largest recorded catalogue. On “Mino bô bé quacueda,” Leonildo Barros's guitar lines curl around a bass foundation associated with Armando Tito, while layered voices give the refrain breadth. The groove lasts more than seven minutes because duration is part of its craft. Small changes in guitar register and vocal density renew the same dance floor.
“Aninha” is more melodic and immediately tender, while “Zimbabwe” compresses political address into a tighter recording. João Seria and Sérgio Fonseca bring different vocal grain to the group. Hearing several tracks prevents the band from becoming a single puxa formula. Their catalogue includes rumba, social commentary, love song and long dance pieces.
Sangazuza's “Sun Malé” drives harder. Bass and percussion push without much decorative pause, and the guitar works like a gear inside the rhythm. “Cortição” gives the band another compact dance recording; “Sono sá kuá de téma” is faster and especially urgent. Sangazuza were rivals and peers inside the island scene, not a footnote to África Negra.
Os Úntués bring close vocal identity to “Chi bô sá migu di védê.” The recording is short, which makes its economy striking: voices establish the song, guitar supplies lift, and the group leaves before the groove becomes an extended workout. Xinha later sang with Os Úntués, part of the often-overlooked history of women entering male conjunto structures.
Sum Alvarinho's “M'konvètá dédo” has a looser vocal presence and an earthy repeated pattern. Conjunto Equador's “Madô” stretches harmony across a steadier bass movement. Tiny das Neves's “Cladênço padê cluço” gives the north-western town of Neves a named voice and a heavier dance arrangement. Place matters because the scene was spread through terraces, roças and towns, even when São Tomé city concentrated radio attention.
Pedro Lima, often accompanied by Os Leonenses, became known for a powerful public voice and social commitment. “Nga ba compensadora” holds a long puxa groove under a lead that can press hard against the chorus. “Esatela licu” gives the Leonenses credit directly. Lima could make political intervention and dance coexist, and his vast recorded legacy includes material still dependent on the radio archive.
Pépé Lima and L'Orchestre de la Jeunesse's “E Exigola” turns toward late-1980s soukous sheen. Loketo's agile guitar gives the track an outward-facing studio brilliance. The recording belongs to Santomean music through singer, repertory and audience while also documenting a network of musicians and production beyond the islands.
Lisbon changes resources, not identity
Camilo Domingos, Juka, Kalu Mendes and Filipe Santo built major parts of their catalogues through Portugal. Diaspora studios offered equipment, labels, accompanists and audiences unavailable at home. The sound often leaned toward zouk, kizomba, soukous and polished romantic production. That similarity of market does not erase individual histories.
Juka's “Eu Amo o Meu País” turns national attachment into a clear lead melody and accessible dance arrangement. His broader catalogue ranges from “Plasséla” to romantic songs and remixes of older island favourites. Kalu Mendes's “Gandú” foregrounds proverb-like writing and rhythmic speech; “Cacharamba” and “Léve-Léve” show other sides of his dance career. Filipe Santo's Lagaia returns explicitly to “Mantxnan - Bulawê” and “Ussua Lecado,” using a contemporary album to name forms whose histories precede the studio.
Calema expanded that movement into mass Portuguese-language pop. Brothers Fradique and António Mendes Ferreira blend close sibling vocals with Afropop, R&B, kizomba-pop and large digital production. “Dia Xi Má Kua Buaru” keeps a Santomean-language centre inside that scale. The polished mix does not sound like a field ensemble, but the relationship between paired voices and island address remains meaningful.
Women are building the present with limited infrastructure
The classic band archive can create a false picture in which women were absent. They were present in communal singing and dance, but social rules kept most away from instruments, rehearsals, late-night stages and group leadership. Xinha, Sebastiana and Cremilda Nogueira became visible exceptions. The costs of that history remain in a present scene with few female instrumentalists and too few durable career structures.
Elaine Neto learned choral arrangement through church and the group Vozes d'Obô. On “Ami cu bo,” she joined Nezó, Any Moreira and Adilson Moreira. The recording points toward a collaborative alternative to isolated solo celebrity: multiple singers, an experienced southern musician and knowledge built through choir work.
Kleusa Mery found a local audience with “Eu amo o meu país” and “Santomé sá gi non.” Her songs address the archipelago directly, and producer Dico Mendes helps turn that writing into recordings. Vanessa Faray moves among rap, theatre, film and community music. Sebastiana sustains solo singing while organizing Danço Congo. Vivalda Prazeres, known as Kennya, combines singing, journalism and artist support through Veeda Studio.
Morena Santiago recorded “São Tomé e Príncipe” as a teenager with producer Moreno. The production uses programmed accompaniment and a direct, youthful vocal. Its wide local circulation is significant in a country where a young woman can still be made to feel that public authorship is an intrusion. The song's achievement is not that it solves the industry's problems. It gives a named young writer a durable public voice.
Video circulation has widened the field. Xinha featuring Killaz on “Inén Mina Ku Inén Mósu” joins an established female voice to a contemporary feature. Silvia Barros's “Defesa” places a woman at the centre of a firm pop statement. Suzete's “Sal Y Água Bendita” reflects a life between São Tomé and the Canary Islands, using multilingual and club-facing production without severing island reference.
Vanessa Faray brings rap, theatre and community work into “Põe-te a Andar,” her 2025 collaboration with Pekagboom. The beat is digitally built, but the vocal is not passive decoration: phrasing, attack and refusal give the track its direction. The recording shows local authorship without pretending that new work must sound traditional or remain on one island.
Software-made instrumentals and playback dominate many performances because live instrumentalists, rehearsal rooms, money and technical support are scarce. A recorded beat may be the only practical means of bringing a songwriter's idea to the public. The limitation becomes serious when total playback replaces every possibility of developing ensemble timing. The answer already exists in local work: choirs teaching parts, Zángoma teaching instrument construction in São João dos Angolares, experienced musicians collaborating with younger singers and archive projects returning old arrangements to audible life.
The present is not one star or one technology. It includes África Negra circulating through restored tapes, Filipe Santo naming ússua on a new digital issue, Calema filling large stages, Morena Santiago building an island audience, Vanessa Faray moving between media and technicians preparing reels that may change the known history. São Tomé and Príncipe music remains a practice of making enough structure for people to enter together.
