The
music of Cape Verde—an archipelago 300 miles west of Dakar, Senegal—is
a music of emigration. While the island nation’s best-known singer is
Cesaria Evora, a young singer born and raised in Lisbon’s émigré
community is presenting once-hidden Cape Verdean styles to American and
European audiences. Her name is Lura!
The Cape Verde Islands are a curious contradiction. On the one hand
they dance to the life-affirming rhythms of Africa; defiant, exuberant
and upbeat. On the other hand their bare-backed bony hills engender a
deep almost listless melancholy and nostalgia, which was exacerbated by
the inherent sorrowfulness of their Portuguese colonisers.
This bittersweet character is inherent in the voice of Lura, one of the
islands' brightest young musical hopes. The sounds she produces are
full of shadow and light, sweetness and pain, fire and balm. She first
came to prominence in the early 1990s, and enjoyed considerable success
with her 1996 CD Nha Vida . Her latest Di Korpo Ku Alma
is her strongest yet and on it she shares songwriting duties with the
late great Orlando Pantera and other Cape Verdean legends like
Bulimundo and Valdemiro Ferreira.
On stage she epitomises the startling beauty and grace of the Cape
Verdean creole, giving herself body and soul to the emotions of her
songs. Her pure creole appeal is made all the more startling by the
fact that she was born and raised in Lisbon, and came to know her
ancestral culture only later on in her teens. (Andy Morgan, WOMAD)
