Grooving on Flip Side of Life

Md. Computer Programmer Produces Album That's Hot in His Native Angola

To his neighbors in Southern Maryland, Gil Ingles is a soft-spoken computer programmer. But to millions of music fans in Angola, he's the producer behind one of Africa's hottest albums, an R&B sensation spinning in all of the country's nightclubs.

The story of Ingles's two lives, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, begins with a young boy learning a few guitar chords and listening to Michael Jackson while the Angolan civil war raged outside his door. Now 36 and living in Waldorf, Ingle finds his early passion for music has helped establish him as one of the fastest-rising producers in Africa's emerging R&B and hip-hop scene.

The album he produced in his Maryland studio, "Transition," got the artist Paul G a nomination for a Kora Award, the African equivalent of a Grammy, and a spot at the top of the charts on MTV Base, Africa's version of the music television channel.

After the violence and destruction he witnessed there years ago, Ingles, 35, said he wanted to produce an album for Angola that "makes people feel good."

The music he created with Paul G for the album "Transition" is all about feeling good. The first single, "Freaking Me Out," combines an infectious beat with the singer's smooth, sultry vocals. As on most of the album's 11 songs, Ingles oversaw the vocal and instrumental recordings and added effects that helped make it one of sub-Saharan Africa's top tunes. The album is a fusion of hip-hop, R&B and African rhythms.

"MTV pushes American music in Africa, so with the cool, slick guys with tons of gorgeous girls, it's no surprise that MTV Africa has had a significant effect on what local musicians aspire to," said Sean Barlow, executive producer of public radio's "Afropop Worldwide."

The collaboration between Ingles and Paul G started when a mutual friend told the African singer about an innovative Angolan R&B producer working 6,600 miles away in Maryland. After a telephone conversation, Paul G was so impressed with Ingles that he decided to make the trip to Maryland.

"I called him one night, and we ended up talking for hours," said Paul G, 33, from Luanda, his home town and Angola's capital. "All of a sudden, we were making arrangements for me to come to the States and record with a guy I had never met."

One of the major points of agreement between the two men was to record the entire album in English, not Portuguese, Angola's official language. Paul G said he had dreamt for years about selling music outside of Angola, and he realized that singing in his native language would make his work accessible only to the world's relatively few Portuguese-speaking populations. English-language artists such as Jay-Z and 50 Cent have drawn huge crowds in Angola in recent years.

Making an English-language album had been a dream of Ingles's as well. Ever since he fled the country after a bomb detonated in his family's living room when he was 10, he has wanted to draw attention to his country's problems as well as its culture. After Angolan rebels tried to assassinate his father, a government official, his family sent Ingles to live in Portugal and then, in 1989, to live with an aunt in Indian Head. He lived without his immediate family for almost 10 years, a period he describes as "a nightmare." He hasn't set foot in Angola in more than 20 years but still considers it home.

"People know Angola for war and diamonds and petroleum, so whatever I do I want to represent Angola in a positive way," Ingles said.

But the decision to record in English drew sharp criticism in Angola. Not many Angolans speak English, so the idea of an Angolan album without a word of Portuguese ruffled feathers in the country's music establishment. Before anyone had even heard the music, Paul G said, he couldn't turn on the radio or answer his cellphone without hearing an angry voice asking why he would sing in a foreign language.