Vivalda Dula

Early life and education

Vivalda Dula was born in Luanda, Angola. She is the sixth of ten siblings. Her father was a former FAPLA soldier during the Angolan Civil War period. When he returned unstable from the war, Dula's mother worried about the children's safety ran away from him taking the children including Vivalda Dula. Two years later Dula´s father died when she was only 9 years old. In her late teens, she was a football player and enter to a second-division team called Footscola in Terra Nova. She earned a scholarship from Footscola that allowed her to conclude her pre-university studies in Social Science at private school named "Cruz Linda" in Luanda.

Vivalda performed as an Afro-contemporary dancer in Minessa and Manésema Afro-contemporary dance companies in Angola until 2004. With Manésema she performed at the 7th International Festival of Traditional Music and Dance in Valencia, Spain. She also hosted the Angolan Public Television show “Estrelas ao Palco” in 2004.

While studying for a Bachelor's degree in International Affairs at UPRA University in Luanda, Dula worked a day job to pay for tuition fees of her 3 youngest brothers and sisters and also to help her widowed mother. She soon relocated to the USA, where she studied Musical Composition at the Houston Community College.

As of 2015, Vivalda studies for a Master's degree in Administration and Management of Cultural Industries at the Miguel de Cervantes European University in Spain.

Musical career

In 2009 Dula created the Afro-contemporary Dance and Percussion company Karapinha Dura and began experimenting with the fusion of Angolan traditional sound and classical music.

Her first musical show was the Afro-contemporary “MUJÍTU” or “The Guest“, created in 2010. The show written, produced and directed by herself premiered in 2011 in Luanda and then in Houston in 2013 during the 6th Akwaaba Dance and Drum Festival.

Vivalda Dula's instrumental band has gathered together musicians from Cameroon, Argentina, United States, Chile and Angola, with Chilean guitarist MV-Robert as the producer and collaboration from the American composer and pianist Kris Becker, the Chinese pianist Wei Shiwei and American bassist Eric Martin.

In 2013 Vivalda released her first solo work the EP “Insanidade Mental” (Mental Insanity). She toured the United States with "Vivalda Dula USA Tour 2014 - Henda Mua Ngola" to promote the album, performing in Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York City, Austin and Houston.

Throughout her career, Vivalda Dula sung in the opening of the Fethiye World Music Festival in Turkey. In 2010, Vivalda Dula and her band sung in the opening of the "Beat and Wind from Japan Asia" taiko show in Luanda.

Vivalda cited as her inspiration during younger years Angolan and world influential musicians and bands as Mito Gaspar, Waldemar Bastos, Ngola Ritmos, Miriam Makeba, Angelique Kidjo, Tina Turner and Ella Fitzgerald. Mostly she sings in Portuguese, Kimbundu, Spanish and English. Her musical style blends together Angolan traditional roots, jazz, rock and soul.

Discography

In 2014, she released the single "Mázui". Her second album "Africa" followed in 2015, recorded together with Kris Becker and Shiwei Wei and released during her concert in Houston.

Insanidade Mental

Track list

Africa