{"id":95099,"date":"2021-12-17T11:34:01","date_gmt":"2021-12-17T10:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/cesaria-evora-dix-ans\/"},"modified":"2022-08-23T11:24:51","modified_gmt":"2022-08-23T09:24:51","slug":"cesaria-evora-ten-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pan-african-music.com\/en\/cesaria-evora-ten-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Ces\u00e1ria \u00c9vora: memories of a journey"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

On the day of Ces\u00e1ria \u00c9vora\u2019s funeral, December 20th, 2011, the singer and Cape Verdean Minister of Culture at the time, Mario Lucio, summed up the diva\u2019s legacy on her country\u2019s outreach: “Cape Verde conquered the world barefoot<\/em>“. Her producer Jos\u00e9 da Silva, remembers fondly what this symbol, which became the singer\u2019s trademark, covered:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“The story of not wearing shoes comes from her childhood. In Portuguese times, you couldn’t walk on the pavement or in the square without shoes, but you had to walk on the road. At the Gremio, the place to be in Mindelo where high society met with the Portuguese at big parties, she was once invited by people who wanted her to wear shoes. She said OK, they bought her a pair: she went in with them, and just after the entrance she took them off and sang barefoot<\/em>.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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At the end of the 1980s, before founding his now iconic label Lusafrica<\/a>, Jos\u00e9 da Silva was a train station agent with a passion for music. In 1987 during a trip to Lisbon, he heard her voice in a restaurant and immediately decided to invite her to Paris for a concert. “And suddenly we were overwhelmed, we had too many people, 800 people for the 400 that the hall could accommodate. And it was the same in Belgium, in Holland… everyone wanted to see her!<\/em>\u201d Indeed, the \u201cbarefoot diva\u201d was already famous, having come to prominence at a very young age on Radio Barlavento, where she recorded her first songs (reissued<\/a> in 2008). But deceived by men and exhausted by her lifestyle, she had stopped singing for 10 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jos\u00e9 da Silva brought her back into the studio. Together, they recorded La Diva aux pieds nus<\/em> (1988), Distino di Belita<\/em> (1990), and finally Mar Azul<\/a><\/em>, recorded acoustically, which revealed her to the general public. Two years later, the song \u201cSodade\u201d, present on the album Miss Perfumado<\/em> (1992), exploded, cementing her status in the musical landscape for good. A popular song in Cape Verde, which Angolan singer Bonga<\/a> had already covered in 1974. Teofilo Chantre, who wrote an important part of the album, explained its meaning:  “\u2019Sodade\u2019 is a song composed on the island of San Nicolau, which evokes the departure of Cape Verdeans to the island of Sao Tom\u00e8 to cultivate cocoa. These people left in a forced manner, they had no money so they had no choice but to sign these contracts, or else they would have committed small crimes… so they travelled in the holds of the boats, without knowing if they were going to return to Cape Verde”. <\/em>The song says: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who showed you the way, the long way to Sao Tome? <\/em>
Sodade, from my land San Nicolau. <\/em>
If you write to me I will write to you, if you forget me I will forget you, until the day you return.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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