release date: Mar. 1997
format: cd
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,88]
producer: José Da Silva
label: Lusafrica / RCA / BMG - nationality: Cape Verde
Tracklist: 1. "Tchintchirote" - 2. "Sabine Largá'm" - 3. "Partida" - 4. "Sangue de Beirona" (4 / 5) - 5. "Apocalipse" - 6. "Mar é Morada de Sodade" - 7. "Bô ê di Meu Cretcheu" - 8. "Coragem irmon" - 9. "Quem Bô ê" - 10. "Regresso" - 11. "Zebra" - 12. "Mãe Velha" - 13. "Pe di Boi" - 14. "Ess pais"
Studio album by Cesária Évora originally released on French record label, Lusafrica, founded by the album's producer, José Da Silva.
This is beautiful African music from Cape Verde. Cesária Évora didn't make a great number of albums in her lifetime, although she lived to be 70 years old (born 1941). At the age of 47, her studio debut album is as late as 1988, and unfortunately she passed away in 2011 having by then released about a dozen studio albums. There's many more live and compilation albums with her fine melancholic singing voice, and her music continues to live on, and this album is a fine place to start. The music is African morna, or maybe more specifically coladeira (a faster style developed from the slow and more monotonous morna). I think, it's world vocal jazz and much in family with latin jazz, at least more so, than i.e. African mande folk, and frankly, I think, the music is somehow closely related to the music of Susana Baca of Peru and the music of Cuban grand lady Omara Portuondo. Without knowing the exact sources, one could imagine a musical relationship due to historical origins of Portuguese and Spanish folk and its effect on local music in both Peru, Cuba, and Capo Verde. Anyway, the music is original and B-A-Utiful. It's music I will always return to, and I cannot imagine that I should ever dislike it. I only need more of this.
Highly recommended. [ here's more ]
