Betty Caplan
24 March 2008
opinion
Nairobi — IF YOU KNOW WHERE CAPE VERde is, chances are that it is because you have come across Cesaria Evora, the "barefoot diva" who has made the music of her native country, once ruled by the Portuguese, popular around the world.
I managed to catch her during her tour of Australia, where she is appearing in almost every state, culminating in the Womadelaide festival in South Australia. It was an unexpected chance for me to see one of my favourite singers and despite high ticket prices, I wasn't going to miss the festival.
Will this almost all-white audience know who she is? How will she react to them? These were the questions that floated through my mind as I sat in the plush red hall in the Victorian Arts Centre waiting for the performance to start.
But I needn't have worried; the ovation began as soon as she appeared and continued, with people humming along to songs such as Saudade (meaning homesickness, sadness and nostalgia) and Africa Nossa, which they had obviously heard many times before.
Australia may be far away, but more and more artists are invited to perform at its many international events and the Internet has decreased the space between us all. Not to mention the fact that the country now has immigrants from many Latin American countries.
Evora's manner on stage is casual, as if she were back home in Sao Vicente, the island where she grew up poor and without hope more than 60 years ago. She recreates the lazy atmosphere of the smoke-filled clubs where she played as a young woman, freely imbibing whiskey and cigarettes, singing the songs composed by her uncle B. Leza in the morna style which is related to Portuguese fado, Brazilian modinha, Argentinian tango and the blues.
It is a mournful kind of music, much loved by the thousands of Cape Verdeans who have had to find livelihood elsewhere because of lack of opportunities at home. Some say the word morna comes from the Portuguese adjective "morno," which means lukewarm or without energy or spirit.
THE MEMBERS OF EVORA'S dance troupe are all male, who in true African style dance with their instruments - a violin, a cavanquinho, a piano, several guitars and a saxophone.
To the formality of the Melbourne setting, she brought a sense of African ease and informality, periodically turning her back on the audience to chat to the band members and sitting down to have a drink halfway through. Once, in a non-smoking New York venue, the crowd cheered when she had the audacity to light up a cigarette.
Evora is very much the anti-star, her stage presence and the music enough to satisfy the crowds; she doesn't need any drama.
Like most African musicians, she has not had an easy life. After losing her father at the age of seven, her mother struggled to support them both on the meagre earnings of a cook. Eventually, the strain was too much and she was forced to hand her daughter over to an orphanage where she had her first musical experience - singing in the local choir, a silver lining to her cloud of sorrow.
At the age of 16, in her hometown of Mindelo, she met one of the great loves of her life, a Cape Verdean sailor called Eduardo who taught her the traditional styles of coladeros and morna.
"They told me I had a good voice, that my voice was very pleasant. And from that moment I didn't stop," she told me.
A Frenchman of Cape Verdean descent named Jose da Silva persuaded her to go to Paris, where she recorded a new album, The Barefoot Diva, in 1988. It won her critical acclaim and began a dramatic comeback that accelerated with her 1992 album, Miss Perfumado, after 10 years of exile from her singing career due to demoralisation, financial problems and alcoholism. Suddenly, at the ripe age of 47, she was an international star. Look closely at her face and you will see a slight squint - one eye staring straight ahead, the other gazing into eternity.
Cape Verde gained independence in 1975 after five centuries of Portuguese rule, which included slavery until the 18th century. The independence leader, a revolutionary and morna singer himself, Amilcar Cabral, was assassinated in the turmoil that accompanied the struggle for independence.
Sao Vicente is one of 10 islands that make up the Cape Verde group, off the coast of Senegal, with a population of 420,000. Evora has never broken away from her roots despite becoming a household name. Her themes remain the suffering and pain caused by love, rejection and the longing of those in exile to go home.
"If I had known that young people could die, I would never have loved anyone," she told me.
Of Mindelo, she sings proudly, inviting visitors to, "Come and enjoy the welcome of our unique candid people. We have no riches, no gold, no diamonds. But we have a divine peace rare in this world."
She pays tribute to her mother: "Next to your oven, you raised us with your black skirt and your little scarf. You showed us who we were."
She knows about lost love after three marriages, but she is not lonely. These days, she lives in a big house in Mindelo surrounded by family and friends where she entertains generously. Whenever she returns home, she sings a hallelujah because that is the source of her music.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The East African. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
