[Cover photo credit to Marilena Umuhoza Dellias]

Our Ancestors Swam to Shore is a new album that showcases the rarely heard music of Angolar Creole (N’golá) speakers from the African islands of São Tomé and Príncipe. Many of the five thousand residents are descendants of escaped enslaved Angolan people, who, as their folklore tells, swam to shore after a shipwreck off the coast. The album arrives on September 27th, 2024, from Free Dirt and PM Press.

Our Ancestors Swam to Shore was Produced by Grammy-winner Ian Brennan and Italian-Rwandan filmmaker and photographer Marilena Umuhoza Dellias, as a companion to Ancestor Sounds, a collection of field recordings by the descendants of formerly enslaved people of Africatown, Alabama released last year.

For this next release, the N’golá musicians of São Tomé repurpose common items, including canoes and fishing gear, as instruments. Our Ancestors Swam to Shore not only tells a people’s history, but delivers “a nod toward the future.”

Ian Brennan plans to tour the East Cost with his new book Missing Music: Voices from Where the Dirt Roads Ends, which details his ongoing quest to provide musical platforms for underrepresented nations and populations around the world. Missing Music collects the latest narratives from Brennan’s field-recording treks. 

Ian Brennan on book tour:

Tuesday, September 24 – Los Angeles, CA
Book Soup with author Gary Phillips
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Saturday, September 28 – Los Angeles, CA
GRAMMY Museum with poet Raymond Antrobus
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Sunday, September 29 – Portland, OR
Powell’s City of Books with Larry Crane (publisher Tape Op)
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Monday, September 30 – San Francisco, CA
City Lights (San Francisco) with Peter Case
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