*Amazed face*
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On checking here, it transpires that, to date there has not been ONE post on here about the legendary 67 year old barefoot cigar smoking whisky drinking star of the morna music of the Cape Verde Islands, Cesaria Evora.
Situated in the Atlantic Ocean virtually due west of Dakar, Senegal, the Cape Verde Islands are a former Portuguese colony, now fairly impoverished and largely dependent on sea fishing, but bl;essed with a very vibrant musical culture.
This tune speaks of sodade - derived from the Portuguese saudade, which means a wistful longing for something that may or may not be achieved. The term is believed to have originated amongst the wives of the sailors on the great voyages of exploration in the 15th and 16th centuries; most of their husbands did not return, and those who did were strangers to their families after years at sea.
In this song, sung in Cape Verdean Portuguese dialect, the singer tells how, as the sun sets in the afternoon, the sea itself delays or holds back the feelings of nostalgia or longing that are sodade
Comments (6)
This is a gem. Thanks for discovering it and sharing it, by a singer I need to hear more of. Also, thanks for defining a word I've always wondered about from listening to bossa nova songs.
Ooops! On looking up and to the right, it appears that I have in fact posted this tune eight months ago, but it didn't pop up when I looked.
Thank you for this most excellent post. She's got a most beautiful "whiskey voice".
it never ceases to amaze me how many artists there really are in the world. MOG has been a real ear opener for whole genres of music i'd never been exposed to before. thanks for being a top notch EMCD tho in yr case, i'd probably drop the E for Evil... (EMCD = Evil Music Crack Dealer or something like that. Yr just not evil Baudolino!)
Thanks for posting this. I had to go to the market and cook dinner, so I pulled the album off the shelf and listened to it while making lasagna.
Absolutely beautiful. Full of the melancholy often associated with this nation's music. It must profoundly affect the people to be entirely surrounded by water, isolated from the rest of the world by it and yet dependent on it for sustenance. Yet in the more uptempo songs, it's not so much sad as gentle, I think. I once knew a woman from there who was a painter. Her paintings exuded that same feeling. There's sort of a nostalgia. She even resembled Cesaria a little, as I recall.
As remote a place as this has played a roll central in the Age of Discovery, as you say. This archepelago was "discovered" by Portuguese in 1460, and it was a major outpost in the Portuguese slave trade, and later spice trade. When the pope divided the world up between Spane and Portugal, the line was defined as 100 leagues (400 miles) west of Cape Verde. Then it was changed to 370 leagues, which gave Portugal Brazil. In 1522, Portuguese authorities here narrowly failed to intercept the Basque pilot Juan Sebastian Elcono, his ship and crew, which would have prevented him from completing (the deceased) Magellan's planned circumnavigation of the world.
She's wonderful. I was lucky enough to catch her at Wolftrap, a very nice amphitheater in Northern VA, USA, several years ago on a balmy summer evening. I think she was on a bill with Bebel Gilberto. The atmosphere was good and her set was great. She had a smoke on stage and when the audience began exhorting her to continue performing, she calmly held up her had as if to say don't rush me here in my little break.