Robin Denselow
CD OFTHEWEEK
Now rightly established as a best-selling international star, Cesaria Evora has moved on from exploring the music of her home (the Cape Verde Islands, off the coast of West Africa), which fuses African and Portuguese styles, to explore that music’s links with other Afro-Latin styles across the Atlantic.
On her new album, So Vicente di Longe (Lusafrica), she has been given the full superstar treatment, with recording sessions in Havana, Rio and Paris, and a supporting cast of nearly 60 musicians, arrangers and engineers.
Was it worth it? Well, her intimate voice is as distinctive as ever, but those immaculately recorded orchestras of sweeping strings and guitars often sound out of place, and at times there’s a clash between her thoughtful approach and that of the musicians, who sound desperate to get up and dance.
Evora’s singing may have a limited emotional range, but when it comes to languid melancholy she’s in a class of her own. That’s true here on the cool, sad Ponta de Fi, which marks her song-writing debut; Regresso, a collaboration with Brazil’s Caetano Veloso; and an exquisite, piano-backed treatment of the Brazilian standard Negue.