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Kuduro , meaning "hard-ass" or "in a hard place," is a contemporary genre of music and dance produced and consumed in Angola, especially in Luanda. This article maps kuduro historically and assesses it in its current moment. While the dance is full of invention and the genre has thrived in the informal economy, this alternative expression and the infrastructure it produces cannot be considered politically or economically liberatory. But the international "os Kuduristas" campaign promoted by two of the Angolan president's children and companies they own shows the dangers of a culturally conservative discourse that dismisses kuduro as a vulgar popular phenomenon while hegemonic political and commercial forces embrace it.Résumé: Kuduro, qui signifie "dur à cuire" ou "dans une passe difficile," est un genre contemporain de musique et de danse venant d'Angola, en particulier du Luanda. Cet article présente le Kuduro dans son évolution historique et évalue son impact actuel. Bien que la danse soit pleine d'invention et que le genre ait prospéré dans l'économie informelle, cette expression alternative et l'infrastructure qu'elle produit ne peut pas être considérée comme politiquement ou économiquement libéra-trice. En même temps, la campagne internationale "os Kuduristas" promue par deux des enfants du président angolais et les compagnies qu'ils possèdent, montre les dangers d'un discours culturellement conservateur qui rejette le Kuduro comme un vulgaire phénomène populaire tandis que des forces politiques et commerciales hégémoniques se l'approprient pour promouvoir leur discours.

At the recent meeting of BRICS-the global economic group consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa-held in Beijing in September , Chinese President Xi Jinping declared that a "historical opportunity" had presented itself as a result of adjustments in "the world economic structure." He urged enhanced "solidarity and cooperation among emerging market and developing countries" to work against the protectionism that had recently gained traction in Western countries, as evidenced in the ascendancy of Donald Trump in the United States and Great Britain's imminent departure from the European Union. Xi's promotion of South-South cooperation as an "irreversible trend" built upon the political positions of earlier periods. The Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, the founding conference of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in , and the establishment of the South Commission at the NAM summit in Harare, Zimbabwe, in September all exhibited a similar rhetoric of solidarity. 1 The Global South of our political present consequently has a long and complicated history, yet distinctions between the past and present must also be drawn. As Vijay Prashad has written in The Darker Nations (), the "Third World" captured not a geography as such, but rather a political project that sought to work against the neocolonial in uences of the United States and its allies (the so-called "First World") and the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc partners (the "Second World"). 2 The expression "Third World" drew from an earlier genealogy connected to the French Revolution and the notion of a "third estate" representing the common people. 3

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