[3] Angolanidade began to develop in the 1940s and '50s, when black Angolans started to differentiate themselves from white settlers by embracing and reclaiming aspects of traditional African culture.
"[4] Writers within the movement, including Agostinho Neto, later to be Angola's first president, identified and highlighted the culture of Angolan musseques, or shanty towns, as a direct counterpoint to the colonial government's perspective that such places were squalid and full of crime.
Especially in the capital of Luanda, which was historically associated with white colonial settlers, black Angolans were encouraged to wear traditional dress as a form of cultural distinction and to build a sense of nationalism among the people.
Historian Marissa Moorman argues that it is "in and through popular urban music, produced overwhelmingly in Luanda's musseques, that Angolan men and women forged the nation.
[2] In choosing to use local instruments and national languages - primarily Kimbundu and Umbundu - in their music, Angolan musicians rejected assimilation and reinforced the concept of angolanidade.