Category: Cape Verdean Creole

Lucibela: Amdjer

January 19, 2023

Lucibela’s soft and lovely voice calms as it penetrates the din of club, street or civilization. On her second album she presents stories that illuminate Cape Verde, her homeland archipelago, and distant shores as well. Amdjer (Woman) is a tribute to her sister citizens, their daily joys and travails, relationships, work, raising children, reflecting their culture but also demonstrating that, as the artist puts it, “What happens to Cape Verdean women happens to … More Lucibela: Amdjer

Elida Almeida: Gerasonobu

July 28, 2021

Elida Almeda’s fourth album is a story of Cape Verde, a portrait of the generation of artists following in the footsteps of the great diva Cesária Évora, and the saga of one singer-songwriter, raised by a single mother in a house without electricity, navigating between tradition and the global winds that have always swept her archipelago nation of sailors and migrants. If the scope of Gerasonobu (New Generation) is ambitious, the performance is stellar, rising on … More Elida Almeida: Gerasonobu

Catarina dos Santos: Rádio Kriola

January 23, 2019

The subtitle of Catarina dos Santos’ second album is “Reflections on Portuguese Identity,” a subject as big as the ocean that touches Portugal, Africa and Brazil and as small as the working-class town where she grew up. Facing Lisbon across the Tagus, Barreiro is home to families from Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea, Mozambique and inland Portugal. From an early age, Dos Santos—whose father … More Catarina dos Santos: Rádio Kriola

Teacher Jekyll: Ondas

October 16, 2018

It’s easy to exaggerate a kindred connection between two people from the same city, even if they were born 150 years apart. But consider: Jules Verne, who grew up in Nantes, certainly knew that nature can send a wave thousands of miles across the sea before it breaks on a shoreline. And Verne’s modern-day townsman, producer-musician-DJ Olivier Corre, knows that human imagination can create waves that bounce back and forth … More Teacher Jekyll: Ondas

Lucibela: Laço Umbilical

July 9, 2018

Feather light arrangements carry Lucibela and her low, soft-power voice like a princess in an open litter, high enough off the ground so her countrymen can see how effortlessly she floats, near enough to hear her singing their story. Laço Umbilical (Umbilical Cord), her first album, is a masterpiece in Cape Verdean Creole, combining melancholy mornas and brisk coladeiras with Brazilian influences; mixing love songs to a beautiful archipelago and ballads about a … More Lucibela: Laço Umbilical

Elida Almeida: Kebrada

December 19, 2017

Elida Almeida describes her second album as an x-ray of Cape Verde, stories that look beneath the surface of hope and disillusion. At 24, she is a consummate singer-songwriter, blending her island homeland’s hallmark styles—funaná, morna, batuque and tabanka—with Latin energy and traces of R&B. Across 12 tracks, the album offers a current, delightfully applied, of life and art imitating one another. With the most mournful doses of reality, Almeida’s warm voice and gentle or upbeat rhythms … More Elida Almeida: Kebrada

Ceuzany: Ilha d’Melodia

March 14, 2017

We think of islands as isolated places, but Cape Verde, the archipelago off Africa’s west coast, has enough tourists and more than enough expatriates to ensure constant traffic and ample opportunity for its prodigiously talented musicians to reach across the waters. One of the country’s rising stars is Ceuzany Pires, whose second solo album is an exploration of home, family, strong women, migration, music and love—expressed in traditional Cape Verdean morna and coladeira, seasoned with folk, rock … More Ceuzany: Ilha d’Melodia

Bonga: Recados de Fora

January 10, 2017

The singer-songwriter Bonga Kuenda is as relevant to Angola’s culture today as he was when his country broke free from Portugal in 1975—remarkable considering he spent most of the intervening years in exile. A thorn in the side of the old Portuguese dictatorship and then to the corrupt leaders who came dominate the newly independent nation, he has been a voice of liberty, identity and protest. Recados de Fora (Messages from Elsewhere)—his thirty-first … More Bonga: Recados de Fora

Lura: Herança

September 5, 2016

Cape Verde has a diverse musical palette, but the international renown of the late Cesária Évora skewed the island nation’s reputation toward the melancholy morna style. Lura idolized Évora, with whom she performed, but she favors the more up-tempo funaná beat. Born in Lisbon to Cape Verdean parents, Lura (Maria de Lurdes Pina Assunção) didn’t speak Cape Verdean Creole until her teens but ultimately made the language the foundation of her career. Herança (Heritage) … More Lura: Herança