{"id":42515,"date":"2017-12-10T18:00:56","date_gmt":"2017-12-10T17:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/diron-animal-from-the-angolan-ghetto-to-afropops-elite\/"},"modified":"2021-10-26T17:11:48","modified_gmt":"2021-10-26T15:11:48","slug":"diron-animal-from-the-angolan-ghetto-to-afropops-elite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/diron-animal-from-the-angolan-ghetto-to-afropops-elite\/","title":{"rendered":"Diron Animal: from the Angolan ghetto to afropop’s elite"},"content":{"rendered":"

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He escaped from Luanda’s ghetto at 17, and recently escaped temporarily from his Porto-based “kudurock” trio Throes + The Shine. Angolan singer and musician Diron Animal plays it solo with his debut album, <\/b>Alone<\/i><\/b>,\u00a0proudly released by the\u00a0excellent UK label Soundway Records.\u00a0<\/strong>Hope, creativity and positive attitude mix with global warming and a strong taste for the dancefloor. Interview in Lisbon before the album’s release show.<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n

PAM: “The ghetto won’t go away from me.”<\/i><\/b> What’s left of the ghetto within you?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Diron Animal:<\/strong> The ghetto will never leave myself because it’s my main source of inspiration, and it’s the place where I learned to get by and make my own way. I feel European above all else, but I’m obviously an African person too. I was born and raised in the ghetto of Cazenga, Luanda (Angola) and I lived there until 17, when I eventually moved to Porto, Portugal. As a child, I would have loads of free time because school started at 7am and ended at 10am. I learned to cope with daily life, inventing strategies of survival and creativity. As our parents didn’t have enough money to buy us toys, we started to make our own, at around age 6 or 8. For example, we would use metallic milk boxes and flip-flops’ rubber to make small cars. We would find all the material in the huge open air garbage dumps, and we never realised how dangerous it was to wander barefoot in the dirt. We also created our own TV box with cardboard, and we would animate small characters in the hole of the screen. Then when we turned 14, we started to craft wooden kick scooters. We had to develop creativity skills as we hardly had nothing at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

“The ghetto will never leave myself because it’s my main source of inspiration, and it’s the place where I learned to get by and make my own way.”<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

Have you kept a link with the traditional instruments of Angola ?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Absolutely. I started to play percussions in the ghetto, using beer cans. Then I crafted my own <\/span>batuque<\/span><\/i> [AN: an Angola percussion instrument] after the capoeira masters had taught me. The technics is pretty simple, and we would just have to buy goat skin off a family that had just killed a goat for food, and we would find wood and calabash easily.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

“Soundway Records’ boss said it was one of the best things he had heard so far this year!”<\/strong><\/span><\/h3>\n

The album is entitled <\/b>Alone<\/i><\/b> and you produced it by yourself: as you’re used to <\/b>do it yourself<\/i><\/b> since childhood?<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Absolutely. I now have all the resources I need, and a better musical knowledge, especially on the technical side of things.<\/span><\/p>\n