“In Mozambique, we still have to find our sound”: Sounding out moçambicanidade after socialism

Abstract

This article examines the evolving sonic politics of moçambicanidade — defined as Mozambican national identity — through popular music and sound after independence. Drawing on ethnographic research, media analysis, and interviews with musicians and audiences, it explores how national identity has been sonically constructed, corporatized, and contested. The article traces the ideological legacy of FRELIMO’s post-independence project of cultural nationalism through debates over youth dance genres, like pandza, in the mid-2000s, and the increasing alignment of music with corporate and state agendas during Armando Guebuza’s presidency (2005-2015). It argues that competing interpretations of a “Mozambican sound” reveal deep class, regional, and generational tensions, and that listening has become a key site for negotiating belonging, dissent, and the limits of state-imposed unity.