A summer evening, Lisbon. Kizomba na Rua has filled the Jardim Roque Gameiro with hundreds of dancers. At the decks, three DJs move and fade between grooves and diasporas. Funaná, semba, coladeira, morna, and kuduro bend and blend into each other. When Angolan songwriter Paulo Flores’s voice bursts through the speakers, a man in the crowd – as if conjured by the music itself – lifts his arms and eyes to the night sky, exclaiming: ‘I swear, I swear I’m proud. Proud of my earth, of my place in the world.” Perhaps the closest hope, the deepest belonging, the antidote to erasure, can be heard rather than seen.
"We are all young before the world. And that youth is the capacity to feel all the flows of the world blend together, mix, in a way that is absolutely unexpected--and absolutely inextricable. Utopia is the strength to feel that." - Édouard Glissant