Nilsa named “Sofala” after the province in central Mozambique where she grew up, and the song reaches back to her childhood there, at her grandmother’s place in the countryside with no television and no telephone, days given over to dancing and singing. It rides on Utsi, a traditional dance from Sofala that lives on the drums. Batuque hand-drummers Abel Isaquiel Maria, Argentino António and Wilson Raposo Vasco carry the rhythm, with Michi Wipf on the kit and Gil Mário Nordez on percussion, while Rolf Mosele‘s guitar and André Buser‘s bass weave through, and Dzua Mosele answers Nilsa’s lead in call and response, the Portuguese slipping into Sena, the language of Beira.
Nilsa sings herself back into her home region. She names where she is from, Sofala, straight out of Beira, then carries the song west to Búzi, calling people to come with her and meet her sister Laurinda. From there it turns to Dominga de Nhaminga. People call her trouble because she will not stay quiet, standing up to demand her rights, stamping her feet and speaking with her hands until her voice carries all the way to the town of Tica. Nilsa returns again and again to one line: “você não só fala, você faz“, you don’t just talk, you do.
Born in Beira, the port city that is Sofala’s capital, Nilsa was one of eight children who built their own instruments and played together. She took her first singing prize at 14, and at 16 joined Djovana, a hip-hop group set up in Beira by two Swiss musicians, which carried her to Switzerland, Germany and South Africa and earned her the name Queen of Mozambican hip-hop back home. She settled in Switzerland in 2001, studied jazz in Bern, and has spent the years since drawing her Mozambican roots through jazz and pop across four albums, from Mamã to Salada Moçambicana. “Sofala” comes now beside a second single, “Emilia”, both of them turning back toward where she began.
Stream and listen to “Sofala” HERE