Kuduro, a popular dance-music-complex from Angola, relies on fast-paced, rhythmic tracks that are computerproduced. Over the propulsive beats, dancers perform rapid and often shocking moves called "toques" and vocalists chant raspy non-pitched lines in a style called "animação".

An intense impetus called "carga" (“charge” or "load") marks a good kuduro performance on the rhythmic, vocal, kinetic, and sartorial levels. Kuduro aficionados called "kuduristas" state that carga is produced in an overall spirit of competition: via good preparation, collective performance, audience interaction, and a form of verbal duelling called "bife". Kuduristas liken the experience of carga to adrenaline and as such link it to the frantic pace of life and constant tension in the Angolan capital Luanda — its ubiquitous music and yelling, its traffic jams and power outages.

This book project examines how kuduro in the setting of the globalised African mega-city Luanda speaks of a mixture of pleasure and trauma that is not only reflective of a violent past of slavery, colonialism and civil war but also productive under the pressures of present-day petro-capitalism. Kuduro’s charge renders the urban cacophony of paranoia and aspiration meaningful. It fuels action, it is a life force. Kuduristas follow the motto “Kuduro is life”. They transmute the violence of daily life into movement and entertainment. In this way, kuduro performances breach the amnesia of trauma and make the ubiquitous violence intelegible. Kuduro makes life liveable, it is life.

At first glance kuduro seems confined to Luanda’s unpaved informal neighbourhoods, the musseques. My research reveals, however, the strategies with which people from all social strata mobilise kuduro's energy for their purposes. The have-nots strive to create visibility and capitalise on it. Cleptocratic rulers reach down from their stratospherically estranged heights by financing kuduro shows to conjure up carga and connect with the people. "Charged! Electronic Dance Music, Pleasure, and Violence in the African Mega-City Luanda" goes beyond dichotomous conceptualisations of power to argue that through producing visibility and building ties with each other, kuduristas and the political power networks dynamically charge each other up.