Evora, Cesaria

CESARIA EVORA

Born: Mindelo, Sao Vincente, Cape Verde, 27 August 1941

Genre: World

Best-selling album since 1990: Cesaria (1995)

Cesaria Evora is the best-known proponent of "morna," a melancholy, cabaret-style poetic music from the impoverished archipelago of Cape Verde in the Atlantic Ocean west of Senegal between Portugal and Brazil. She did not launch her international career until the age of forty-seven. The niece of the composer B. Leza, she started singing professionally at age sixteen and soon was famous in her islands; by the late 1960s her radio air checks were released as albums in the Netherlands and Portugal. Many Cape Verdeans emigrate, but Evora did not leave her home. However, discouraged by a lack of earnings, she gave up singing from the mid 1970s until 1985, when she ventured to Portugal to record two tunes for an anthology of women vocalists from Cape Verde.

A French agent of Cape Verdean descent invited Evora to visit Paris for the first time in 1987 and arranged recording sessions that resulted in the 1988 release of the album La Diva Aux Pieds Nus ("The Barefoot Diva"). Her debut performance at the New Morning music club followed, and two more albums were released with limited distribution. She won favorable press attention for her appearance at the 1991 Festival d' Angoulème, which led to radio play, further club engagements in Paris, and the launch of her international renown, which was solidified with the release of the album Miss Perfumado (1992).

After sold-out concerts at Paris's prestigious Olympia theatre, Evora embarked on her first international tour in 1993, performing in Spain, Montreal, and Japan. In 1994 the Brazilian vocalist Caetano Veloso joined her onstage in Sao Paolo, and upon her first tour of the United States in 1995, she was hailed by Madonna, David Byrne of Talking Heads, and the saxophonist Branford Marsalis. Her album Cesaria (1995), having already sold more than 100,000 copies in France, was nominated for a Grammy when issued in the United States.

Evora's slightly weathered voice, diffident style, romantic failures (she's thrice-wed and thrice-abandoned), and rocky career ascent heightened her image as a tobacco-smoking, cognac-swilling heiress to Billie Holiday.

Mornas and faster-paced, more upbeat coladerias are sung in Kriolu, a mélange of old Portuguese (Cape Verde was a Portuguese colony) and African tongues; they have affinities to Portuguese fado, Brazilian modinha, Argentine tango, British sea chanties, and African percussion. As Evora intones lyrics by the poets of her homeland, she conveys a world-weariness and hard-earned wisdom reminiscent of Edith Piaf.

A pleasant-looking if no longer beautiful woman with a stocky figure, Evora has a limited range but is capable of compelling, nuanced turns of phrase that communicate to speakers of English as well as Lusaphone listeners. She is typically accompanied by small string ensembles with guitars, the ukelelelike cavaquino, bass, an obbligato instrument such as violin or clarinet, sometimes piano or accordion, and a handclapping rhythm section. Since 1995 she has toured worldwide, often with a band led by the string player Bau.

Evora recorded "Besame Mucho" in Spanish for the soundtrack of the film Great Expectations (1998), and on São Vicente (2001) she collaborated with Cuban musicians, including pianist Chucho Valdes, trumpeter Elipdio Chapotin, and the flute-and-violin band Orquesta Aragon, as well as Veloso and the American blues singer Bonnie Raitt. Whatever she sings seems to proceed at an implacable pace, neither slowing for balladic dramatics nor perking up to dance tempos. In this respect Evora evokes the constancy, if not the heights and depths, of the sea.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Miss Perfumado (Melodie, 1993); Cesaria (BMG, 1995); Cabo Verde (BMG, 1997); Cafe Atlantico (RCA, 1999); Mar Azul (Melodie, 1999); São Vicente (Windham Hill, 2001). With Salif Keita: Moffou (Universal, 2002); With Compay Segundo: Duets (Gasa/Warner Bros., 2002); Original Soundtrack, Great Expectations [Score] (Atlantic, 1998); With Caetano Veloso: Red Hot + Rio (BMG, 1996).

howard mandel