“On Luso Noir, eleven major voices from Angola, Cape Verde and Mozambique sing praises to various forms of the Saudade, a poignant musical expression of weltschmerz inherited from the Portugese conquistadors. Sadness, longing, gentle melancholy – none of these translations can quite capture the full depth of Saudade's emotional pull.”

The Portugese empire ruled its African possessions for 500 years, dissolving in 1975 after a series of bloody revolutions. The Saudade remained, not only as a musical genre but as as an approach to life, a unifying cultural legacy which has not only survived, but thrived. Even the word itself: “Saudade” was selected by a German jury to be one of the ten most beautiful words in the world. The fall of Portugal's once great realm is rendered literarily comprehensible through the transcendental novels of Portuguese author António Lobo Antunes.
The post-independence, African perspective is presented musically by the singers on this compilation.