BATIDA

Photo: Catarina Limão

Angolan/Portuguese musician, producer and DJ Pedro Coquenão (aka Batida) has, in the last few years, managed to provoke such widespread interest that he rarely finds himself off the club and festival stage – few performers can boast appearances at music expos as diverse as Eurosonic, Womex and Babel Med, and only Jambinai, DG guests last time round, can begin to match the global interest, outside pop circles, that Batida is currently enjoying. He arrives with a fully-rounded musical vision – one that melds live and sampled Afro and Afro-Caribbean music, with pride of place going to the increasingly popular Angolan kuduro style, with heavy dance elements and on-the-mark politically charged video projections. Music and movement transport you to a dimension of the mind, of historical experience – super-real when showing the bloody war in Angola (‘Bazuka’) or fictional in ‘Pobre e Rico’, which is a look at the early days of Angolan film production. Batida will be rounding off this year’s festival.

Batida is the closing event of the Druga Godba Festival.