Movimento

You could say that Aline Frazão is the Mayra Andrade of Angola – a singer who has made a concerted choice to make music influenced by her African roots but is determined not to be limited by them. The tracks on Movimento, her second album, are pan-Lusitanian, drawing on Cape Verde, Brazil and global jazz as much as they do her native Angola.

Underpinned by vocal percussion, light shekere (gourd shaker) and handclaps, the delightful a capella ‘Kalemba’ fuses African languages with Portuguese, and crooning vocals with an African chorus. While on ‘Nossa Festa’ (Our Party), Frazão sounds like an African Esperanza Spalding – delightfully mixing complex jazz harmonies and time signatures with Luso-African melody. But Frazão's first musical love is clearly Brazil. ‘A Ultima Bossa’ is a love song to an unknown someone, but also to the music of Tom Jobim, while ‘Crónica de um Desencontro’ is a satisfyingly rich meeting of modern jazz and Brazilian MPB, with smooth fretless bass and staccato piano.

Frazão is clearly talented both as a musician and a composer. All the songs on the album are her own. But accomplished though Movimento may be, it is a record that suggests ideas in formation rather than ideas fully formed. She has yet to find what drives her, it seems, and this lack of underlying musical purpose is betrayed by a lack of power and passion in her singing at times, and a lack of unity in the album as a whole.