David Zé

After the end of the Angolan Civil War, a renewed interest in Zé's music developed. In 2001, an annual festival called "Super Caldo do Poeira" was established to celebrate the music of David Zé and other early pioneers of semba music. In 2004, a double CD edited by Rádio Nacional de Angola and titled Memorias de David Zé was released, collecting a substantial part of the singer's work.

On 27 May 1977, Nito Alves, a hardline member of the MPLA and leader of the Fractionist group, launched a failed coup against Agostinho Neto, which lead to a wave of reprisals that left thousand dead. Zé, alongside fellow musicians de Castro and Nunes were among those killed, but no official account of their death exists.

In November 1976 he married Maria Trindade, while on military duty in São Tomé and Príncipe. He had four children, Miguel Gabriel Ferreira, Maria Carolina David Ferreira, Deolinda David Gabriel Ferreira and David Gabriel José Ferreira.

His 1975 abum "Mutudi Ua Ufolo/Viúva Da Liberdade", released in the year of Angola's independence, is considered his most celebrated work and among the most iconic albums from that era.

His career only lasted for about a decade, but he established himself as one of the biggest name in the "Golden Age" of Angolan music of the early 1970s. He was kidnapped and later assassinated by a group of people who dissolved from the MPLA during or after a failed attempt at a coup that took place in the 27th of May of 1977 and his music was banned from radio for more than a decade. But now he is relived and cherished as a public figure, a role model, an example to society, never to be forgotten.

Along with de Castro and Artur Nunes he formed a trio of the most popular singers of the early 1970s, a period which is described by music historians as the "golden era" of Angolan music. Their music was central to the new cultural and nationalistic sense of identity which developed in Angola at the time, making them targets of the Portuguese authorities. They were known for politically charged music which were a mixture of Semba, Merengue, Rumba and Bolero.

In 1966, David Zé met the singer Urbano de Castro, who convinced him to pursue a musical career. His first record, released that same year, was "Kadica Zé".

David Zé (23 August 1944 — 27 May 1977) was an Angolan musician, composer and activist. He began his singing career while Angola was still under the rule of the Portuguese Empire and his music often expressed left-wing and anti-colonialist sentiments. David Zé, along with Artur Nunes, Urbano de Castro and others, was a part of a group of musicians called the FAPLA-Povo Alliance who had the role to spread and divulge awareness to Angolan citizens to start a movement of revolution. After Angolan War of Independence in 1975, he was given the official position of Director of Music in the incoming MPLA regime.

He was born David Gabriel José Ferreira on August 23, 1944, in Quifangondo, Luanda Province. He was the son of Gabriel José Ferreira and Carolina José Afonso, both choristers of the Methodist Church. He attended primary and secondary education in the province of Cuanza Norte. For a while he worked at a foundry in Hoji Ya Henda.