CD of the week
Cape Verde – the name just hasn’t been the same since that wonder-woman Cesaria Evora was discovered singing her mornas in a dusty bar in Mindelo.
These days Evora must be one of her country’s biggest exports. Ignored until her fifties, she suddenly sold over 200E000 copies of Miss Perfumado, which was when all of us suddenly became erudite in the forms of Cape Verdean music. There just isn’t a dinner party in town these days that doesn’t happen against a backdrop of these lilting Portuguese tunes, sad yet quite kitsch in what seems to be heavy sentimentalism.
Now, the clever guys at the Putumayo factory (that best of world music labels) have released a compilation from the island. The album, simply called Cape Verde, opens out an entirely new musical vista, showing that in her country Evora is far from a flash in the pan. The 12 artists, Cape Verdeans of diverse backgrounds and generations, are all breathtaking in the same mysterious way: combining what is African in their culture (they’re 500km from Senegal) with their acquired culture of Portuguese.
Cape Verde moves, it’s a dream come true. All the sadness of exile, poverty and drunkenness condensed into song. How does one know? Just read the album’s booklet, it has English translations for those who don’t speak Portuguese.