Afric Simone

From Xipamanine to the world

In Italy, he is very famous. Everyone has been dancing and singing one of his songs. He’s been the summer hit, of clubs, of pure showmanship since the late 70s.

Afric Simone, his artistic name, is a kind of male version of Pippi Longstocking or the Wizard of Oz. A concentration of rhythms, surreal friendliness, made-up words, an authentic stage animal that plays with the body, fire and a chair gripped with teeth. He is part of the history of dance, afro and funk music and that is why it is absolutely necessary to listen to him and dance with him.

I have always been fascinated by this gentleman who enchanted my adolescence in the 70s/80s. I’ve been looking for him for a long time, but since he’s something of a living legend, a club Greta Garbo, it hasn’t been easy. Lots of phone calls, lots of clues, but nothing concrete. Until, at the suggestion of another Mozambican musician in the diaspora, Fu Manjate, I got in touch and finally got to talk to my idol over the phone. How exciting!

My surreal hero lives in Berlin, speaks his own language, made up of a mix of many languages, from Bitonga to German, passing through Portuguese, Italian and Spanish, with a hint of French and a lot of English. He doesn’t take anything seriously, apparently, but he’s very careful about what he tells about his adventurous life, full of stories and secrets.

It all started when his father, a Brazilian pastor from São Paulo, arrived in Mozambique in the 1940s. He found Afric Simone’s mother and they formed a family: two daughters and a son. He can’t say for sure the year of his birth. “On my passport it says that I am 80 years old, but I think I must be around 75 or 76 and, besides, how can I remember when I was born?”

Having lost his father, the boy Henrique Joaquim Simone went to Lourenço Marques to earn money. He had taken a job as a nanny, but he loved to play and dance. “I played with my friends at Chipada amusement park, in Xipamanine, he says. We sang “Tutti Frutti”, by Elvis. I learned to play by myself and to this day I can’t read a stave…”

At the time, his artistic name was Kid Kid and that comic name would still suit him today.

He tells me that he is Eusébio’s cousin and that one day a South African manager invited him to play in clubs in England. He wasn’t of age, had no documents and that was when his birth date was made up. This happened when Mozambique was still an overseas province of Portugal…

He went to London, played in the most trendy clubs until the day he got angry with his manager and left “with only my coat and nothing else” to Berlin. It was then that he had to renew his passport to travel. That’s when he got a German passport. “A story of bureaucracy that never ended… I’m Mozambican, but at that time it was a serious problem with the Portuguese. And so I never had a Mozambican passport again…”

His life changed when he started singing “Barracuda”. And then came the first tour to Venezuela. “I even had a band at the airport to greet me… and I had to learn to sign autographs because I was so famous!,” he says amused.

As he tells his life, he plays the guitar and sings the choruses of “Ramaya” and “Hafanana”. “You know, ‘Ramaya’ is famous in Western Europe whereas ‘Hafanana’ is famous in Eastern Europe. To this day I don’t know why, but life is like that…”

He continues to give concerts with his hits of the time, especially in Eastern European countries. The many reasons for this wave of nostalgia will certainly be more complex to research, but a main factor is that the 70s/80s were fun, irreverent and brave. The dance of the 70s/80s set the clubs on fire and there was also the trend of Afro music that made the public go crazy.

“I would like to show my son the land where I was born. Yes, I would like to show him Inhambane.”

He became “a little rich”, but lost everything when his friend-manager died and left him the bank loan for the studio they had set up together to pay for. “I don’t care about being a rich man, I’m a valuable man… I have a wonderful son, Fábio “Ramaiiiiito” Simone, I ride my bike and even give shows – he always has a smile on his lips. The corona has been a disaster in this respect. Right after the second dose of the vaccine, I went to Sardinia, Italy, to give a show. What more could you want? I would like to show my son the land where I was born. Yes, I would like to show him Inhambane.”

Hambanine, Afric Simone, many fans are waiting for you in Mozambique.

Issue 68 Jul/Aug | Download.