O godz. 20:06 puściła pierwszego dymka. I na tym koniec. Czyżby Cesaria Evora walczyła z nałogiem? Ponad 4 tys. osób w Hali Stulecia z zapartym tchem oglądało koncert afrykańskiej diwy.

Królowa “morny” jest bez wątpienia największą gwiazdą tegorocznego Ethno Jazz Festivalu.

Cesarii Evorze można wybaczyć wszystko. Narzekania na dość znaczne opóźnienie, chłód w Hali Stulecia i dość niewygodne siedzenia ustały natychmiast po wejściu gwiazdy na scenę. Ta niewielka, wiekowa już kobieta oczarowała widownię już od pierwszych dźwięków.

Powaliła nas na łopatki niesamowitym „Besame Mucho” ze sporą dawką saksofonu.
Po Cesarii “Ewr” – tak bowiem właściwie należy wymawiać jej nazwisko – widać już niestety upływający czas. Choć wciąż w wysokiej, artystycznej formie, zauważalne są jej problemy z poruszaniem się. Tym wymowniejsze były na końcu próby nawiązania kontaktu bosonogiej diwy z publicznością. Matczyne gesty naprawdę wzruszały i były nagradzane gromkimi brawami.

Zgodnie ze swoją zasadą, bisowała tylko raz. Długo po tym jednak wrocławska publiczność nie mogła pożegnać się z “Cesarzową”. Schodząc ze sceny otrzymała oklaski na stojąco, będące jednocześnie kolejnym zaproszeniem do naszego miasta. Do następnego!

La “grande dame” of capverdian music, was born in 1941, usually performs bare-footed and her music style is called “morna”. Please enjoy!

Besame mucho

Sodade

Africa Nossa

Mar de Canal

Carnaval

Arguably Cesaria Evora’s best album. If this is her September song, it’s a hot September. Then again, the legendary Cape Verde chanteuse has been singing September songs for the past 25 years – she’s had plenty of practice. As with Portuguese fado, the mornas of her native land off the coast of Africa traditionally have a sad undercurrent, but there’s another level of melancholy here since her childhood friend and longtime songwriter Manuel de Novas died earlier this year after providing her with a few last songs, which are represented here. As Evora’s publicist memorably observed, Cape Verde is a “melting pot on a Bunsen burner.” Like other ports, its music has been enriched by generations of seafarers and the cultures they brought with them, perhaps explaining why Evora’s most recent work has been so widely traveled as well – previous albums have blended Cuban, Brazilian and African sounds into her signature ballads. This time around, she and her producers enlisted a crew of Egyptian musicians on several tracks, which, rather than Arabizing the music, adds the intriguingly ominous textures of oud and kanun (Arabic zither) along with ney flute and a string section. Vocally, Evora brings her signature style, resolute and understated with a tinge of smoke. She’s been called the Billie Holiday of Cape Verde and while stylistically the two singers don’t have much in common, neither ever had to turn up the volume to make a point.

Most of the songs here have a brooding minor-key melancholy. De Novas’ compositions typically favor latin melodies and rhythms, the first fast and swirling with almost a soca beat; another lit up by a simple, percussive electric guitar solo; and a warmly evocative, blues-inflected wee-hours piano ballad with a tricky false ending. The songs with the Egyptian orchestra share a stark intensity, especially the plaintive title track with the strings taking a graceful but ominous cascade down the chromatic scale and the stately tango Vento de sueste (Southeast Wind) with its reverberating kanun and violin.Ironically, Evora’s darkest vocal – and the one place on the album where she shows her age – is on the gorgeous Noiva de Ceu (Girlfriend from the Sky) with its lush bed of acoustic and electric guitars and vivid violin intro/outro. The rest of the album includes an upbeat, Afrobeat-inflected number, a couple of haunting, continental-flavored, accordion-driven tunes and a song that could almost pass as merengue. After all these years, Cesaria Evora is still pushing the envelope.

A quick post since that’s all I seem to have time for these days…

Last weekend, my wife and I visited the Titian, Veronese, Tintoret show at the Louvre (http://tinyurl.com/y94p5pf) and it was fantastic. About 50 paintings or so, all well documented with intelligent themes and generally good lighting. There was a large crowd but there is enough space in the Louvre temporary exposition space for folks not to feel to claustrophobic. The choice of paintings in excellent and the catalog (41€) is hard-cover and with lots more background and reproductions. We both thoroughly enjoyed the show and encourage those reading the blog to see it if possible. Didn’t use the audio guide this time so can’t comment on that this time…

Of course, if you go, you’ll pass in front of the new meccah of Paris – the Apple Store in the Carrousel du Louvre. A beautiful store (as usual) that I only saw through the plate glass windows because I was there on J-1 before the opening last Saturday.

Last night, we saw Cesaria Evora (http://tinyurl.com/7ks44) in concert at the Grand Rex. An exceptional tenor female voice accompanied by a band of 8 including 2 percussionists, a pianist, a sax player, a violinist, an accordionist, two guitarists and a bassist. Special guest stars included two Algerians on traditional instruments. We were treated to about 1 1/2 hours of music including most of her most popular songs. At 68, she still can sing but did look tired and needed a cigarette break in the middle of the show during which a blind backup singer blew us away on yet another tune. That and the fact that the Rex is such a fabulous place to see concerts made for an enchanting evening.

Until next time…

Cesaria Evora has overcome poverty, a revolution, and even a recent stroke to become a national treasure of Cape Verde and uphold her reputation as an increasingly adventurous icon of world music. On her latest album, Nha Sentimento (digital release October 24, 2009; Lusafrica), Cesaria ventures further afield than ever before, twisting Arabic musical traditions into bluesy, sinuous compositions from some of Cape Verde’s best songwriters.

Perhaps this is the spirit of morabeza, the warm welcome Cape Verdeans are known to give to visitors of their homes and of their country. “We are a people who like to be sympathetic with other people,” Cesaria explains. “It doesn’t matter where you come from, who you are… dress doesn’t matter, the color of your skin… what we like to do is to make you feel at home. That is morabeza .” As the lyrics of “Parceria E Irmandade say, “Morabeza is our essence//It’s our lifeblood, it’s not oil//It’s our happiness smiling//It’s a tear of sodade.”

Cesaria Evora is indomitable. She started out singing in an orphanage when her mother, a well-known chef, could no longer support her. She had lost her father, who played the guitar and violin, both mainstays of Cape Verde’s indigenous music, and shown her a creative world that she would not rediscover until her teenage years. When she was only fifteen, the musician and author Gregorio Goncalves, known as Ti Goy, sensed her budding talent and took her under his wing. He taught her the mornas (Cape Verdean blues), and Cesaria’s voice was born again.

On the island of São Vicente, far from the coast of Senegal, in the port of Mindelo, a city that leans against the sea, in the Café Royal, she would gather in the company of Mindelo’s musicians in the late afternoon, preparing for a night performing in the clubs, where she quickly became a local idol. She sang the blues in the Cape Verdean creole, a punchy, silk-gloved West African Portuguese. Between trademark puffs on a Portuguese cigarette and shots of hard liquor, in front of the richest men in Cape Verde , a blooming Cesaria sang in an adult’s alto tones of the distances across the ocean. She mourned for love in the bosom of craggy and accidental islands washed warm by tropical currents. She began recording at local radio stations (recordings which only made it to light last year on the album Radio Mindelo, which compiled these archives; www.myspace.com/radiomindelo). Her place in the leaves of local music history was assured. Cesaria’s song was the epic of Cape Verde , but it was a song that could not yet reach across the waters.

The world had come to Cape Verde, and the world might have left it behind, save for the tenacity and talent of artists like Cesaria. Forty-five years since she began her career, this unassumingly matronly and weathered woman with a crinkly, lopsided grin found her music in a studio in downtown Cairo. For this album, Cesaria and her crew found a collaborator and an admirer in Fathy Salama, a former conductor of the Cairo Orchestra who arranged the three mornas on Nha Sentimento. Fathy brought Egyptian instrumentalists into his studio in downtown Cairo to add a new texture to the music, largely written by fellow Cape Verdeans Manuel de Novas, Cesaria’s friend since childhood, and Teofilo Chantre. The music of Cape Verde is diverse and New World-y, incorporating guitar, violin, and the soprano saxophone into its Latin scales and rhythms. Egypt’s reedy pipes, edgy percussion, lush strings, and the crystalline sound of the kanun(Arabic zither) feel right at home. Cesaria and Fathy’s efforts paid off on the album, which boasts hybrid arrangements that sound both Egyptian and Cape Verdean, yet as classic and visceral as Depression-era jazz.

On some tracks, the musical traditions are in a dialogue. On “Sentimento,” a Verdean blues where the Egyptian flute wails in a mournful, ululating call-and-response with Cesaria and her understated questions.  Elsewhere, Fathy’s arrangements lay a bed of dynamic tension beneath her effortlessly direct delivery. On “Vento de Sueste” and “Mam’Bia É So Mi,” there is no question who is in charge: Cesaria Evora stands before the footlights with the posture of a defiant dandelion, projecting the light of the sun, and when she opens her mouth, the world turns to listen.

It was this vocal “texture” that first intrigued Fathy Salama over fifteen years ago. Cesaria Evora’s voice is hot chocolate and brandy – on the very first sip, the bite of liquor that fills your nose provides a warmer feeling than hot milk ever could. From the very first track, “Serpentina,” it is clear that Cesaria’s voice has aged well, that her sugars have fermented into something adult. Her joy is never saccharine, and the sound of experience and age nudges her blues into memory. “Zinha” was named for an old girlfriend of writer Manuel de Novas. Years ago, her father had disapproved of their relationship. This song records Manuel’ s attempts to comfort her. With decades of hindsight on his side, Manuel wrote this as a playful, danceable song, but Cesaria sings as a young Manuel, taking it right back to that day when he told her not to worry, not to cry. Evora’s voice has a peculiar range that makes her as credible as a young suitor as she is as a respected matron of song.

This worldliness was born of the tight-knit community of Cape Verde, a melting pot on a Bunsen burner. “Mine is a normal life of a Cape Verdean,” claims Cesaria, permitting a rare and telling smile. This album, named for the “feeling” that Cape Verdeans share, celebrates the islands at their best. “Verde Cabo di Nhas Odjos,” the sprightly, slinky second track, walks through a Cape Verde turned a rare shade of real green. Asked about the track, Cesaria intones, “Green is life, green is dreams, green is hope, green is all.”

On this album, Manuel de Novas cast the net that connected Cesaria to that world of common experience. Tragically, he passed away in the Fall of 2009, before the world could hear Nha Sentimento . Cesaria Evora and Manuel de Novas had known each other since they were children, since the days when their mothers were like sisters. “He was a great friend, a very good composer,” recalls Cesaria. “We were always laughing whenever we were with Manuel.” In a late interview, Manuel praised not just Cesaria’s considerable talent, but her dedication and artistry, observing with more than a little admiration that “She lives the music not just with her voice but with her deep soul.” Pressed for comment, Cesaria bluntly explains her “method”: “I listen to the songs, and they have to move me. If I don’t feel the words, I don’t sing.”

Cesaria tempers and channels her feeling and movement with incredible vocal skill. On “Verde Cabo di Nhas Odjos,” Cesaria slings her phrases deftly about like comets tossed over her shoulder, hitting a target with every casual gesture. The same is true of “Ligereza,” featuring accordion tracks recorded by Henry Ortiz in Bogotá. Here, the instruments and Cesaria’s carelessly precise voice brush lightly against each other, building a mad spontaneous circle dance of static tension. Cesaria’s background shows through: as a young woman performing for local audiences, she learned a tradition and a genre inside-out. Cape Verdean music is local music, music for entertainment and art, and music that was long blind to the global market. Over the years, Cesaria’s voice, sometimes compared to Billie Holiday’s, became a sensual thing with a timeless and serene character, so refined and sophisticated an instrument as to seem impossible here on Earth.

Yet, Cesaria Evora is a worldwide star with globetrotting credentials and shows no sign of stopping. “This time it was from Egypt ,” she relates, with an enigmatic eye already trained on future projects, “but it can be from anywhere.” “We cross other borders to achieve other styles,” explains her producer, José da Silva. “We recorded a disk with Cuban musicians and also with Brazilian musicians. The previous album involved African musicians, and now we have taken new inspiration from Arabic music. This makes us open-minded to other cultures.” The result is music as cosmopolitan and potent as a cocktail: a dozen exotic potables swirl in Brownian motion, lifting up a shot of pure grain Cesaria.

Submitted by Rock, Paper, Scissors Inc.

“nha sentimento” o novo álbum da cantora cabo-verdiana Cesária Évora está disponível desde  26 de outubro de 2009.

Drei Jahre nach dem letzten Studioalbum Rogamar ist Cesaria Evora mit dem neuen Studioalbum Nha Sentimento zurück. Das neue Album wurde im Frühjahr 2009 in Mindelo, auf der kapverdischen Insel São Vicente, und in Paris aufgenommen, nachdem Cesaria Evora von ihrem 2008 während einer Tournee in Australien erlittenen Schlaganfall genesen war.

Nha Sentimento, das deutlich mehr Coladeras als Mornas enthält und damit fröhlicher daher kommt als vorherige Alben, wurde von José da Silva produziert, Nando Andrade sorgte für die Arrangements. Die Stücke stammen größtenteils von Teófilo Chantre uund Manuel Novas. Im November tritt Cesaria Evora in Genf (11.11)., Zürich (12.11.) und Luxemburg (14.11.) auf, für 2010 sind auch Konzerte in Deutschland geplant.

Das Marburger Label Tropical Music verlost unter allen Käufern der CD zusammen mit TAP, Zeit Reisen und One World eine zweiwöchige Reise für zwei Personen auf die Kapverden, Reisetermin ist der 10. 10-24.10.2010. Einsendeschluss für das Gewinnspiel 31.01.2010.

Ayer fue un día “raro”, musicalmente hablando. Todo empezó escuchando algunas canciones del nuevo disco de Baaba Maal. A partir de ahí, fue cogiendo cuerpo esta recopilación que os dejo hoy en esta entrada. Aunque creo que tiene coherencia musical, es una mezcla de ritmos brasileños, jamaicanos, africanos, jazz, soul, pop y, sobre todo, mucha fusión de estilos (la versión soul-funk que hace Manito de Na Baixa Do Sapateiro es impagable). Sé que no es la típica recopilación que suelo dejar en el blog, pero merece la pena escucharla.

Haz clic para descargar las canciones y la carátula de la recopilación

Haciendo clic en la imagen os podéis descargar “Home Is Where The Heart Is“, que incluye canciones de Badi Assad, Caetano Veloso, Les Rita Mitsouko, Tony Allen, Manito, David Byrne, The Very Best, Horace Andy, Paul Simon, Rodrigo y Gabriela, David McAlmont & Michael Nyman, Nina Simone, Bettye Lavette, Cesaria Evora, Baaba Maal, Salif Keita, Roberto Silva, Beth Carvalho & Zelia Duncan, Maria Bethânia y Cassandra Wilson.

AQUÍ tenéis el listado de canciones que he incluido.

P.D.: La foto la hice en Harlem, en marzo de este año.

Imaginează-ţi o doamnă înveşmântată într-un costum negru ca un sac, exact cum se îmbrăcau creştinii în Evul Mediu din dorinţa de a-şi ascunde trupul. Acest gest, spuneau ei, le elibera sufletul şi îi facea să perceapă forţa divină.

Imaginazăţi-o în picioarele goale cu nişte tălpi umflate, crăpate, aproape inestetice. Şi la toate acestea adaugă o privire goală şi nişte buze care nu zâmbesc niciodată. Să nu uităm, totuşi, un aspect: vocea şi limba în care se comunică. Este vorba despre vocea Cesariei Evora şi despre limba portugheză. O combinaţie din care, te asigur, se naşte muzică.

Şi când spun muzică nu mă refer la o înşiruire de sunete melodice, nu, deloc. Mă gândesc la un citat banal din Ludwig van Beethoven….vă recomand continuarea.

I am a huge music lover with a collection that could rival that of any record company. I have a very eclectic taste. I love my Busta. And I love my Bach. I love music that just speaks to the soul. Even though you might not speak the language of the singer, you feel what he or she is trying to say. Cesária Evora is one of those singers. Hailing from the intriguing island country of Cape Verde off the coast of Africa, she is a singer who mesmerizes her audiences. In no matter what country, you are forced to listen to her when she starts singing.  

Cesária Evora is a singer that I wish everyone can hear at least once. In many clubs and boutiques here near my neighborhood, I can often hear her music being played. Coming to Togo and hearing Cesária Evora songs such as “Sodade“, “Petit Pays“, “Besame Mucho“, and “Angola“ was such a wonderful thing because it really goes to say that the language barriers were broken. I have included a Youtube video of one of her songs and one of my favorites from her called “Sodade.” Enjoy! Cheers, Adaeze

Emotiva,

Am 2 concerte la care imi doresc tare mult sa ajung – si o sa ajung.
1. Cesaria Evora – aici totul este simplu:
- Data: 1 Octombrie 2009
- Locatia: Sala Palatului
- Pret: 85 RON, 115 RON, 160 RON sau 230 RON, in functie de categorie.
Nu mai ramane decat sa fug sa imi iau un bilet..

2. Parov Stelar .. aici lucrurile se complica. Teoretic se pare ca o sa concerteze pe 25 septembrie, locatia fiind The Silver Church.
Bun, intru pe site-ul lor sa verific informatia gasita pe google.
Dar acolo: surpriza: nu apare nimic despre acest concert. Nimic. 0 ! Niente!
Asa ca mi-am continuat cautarea. [Degeaba!]
Tot ce stiu este ca o sa aiba loc siggurr la Cluj.
Ei bine, parca m-as duce mai bine la Cluj.
Greu cu informatia asta in zilele noastre! Alo, nenea organizatorii, trezireaaaa!

Lately I’ve been quite obsessed with anything Bantu-related or Sub-Saharan African. I don’t know why but this new-found interest has been so present in my mind for quite some time. How curious.

As a Brazilian, it is quite likely that I am partly descendant of an African people, unbeknownst to my family for political or racistic reasons. Still, given the way African people were brought to Brazil, it is quite probable they came from a Bantu nation somewhere in Angola or Mozambique or the regions nearby.

Due to the heavy European influence, getting information from South Africa happens to be much easier than the other countries. I have become quite a fan of Miriam Makeba, a South-African singer of the Xhosa ethnic group who is actually known in Brazil for her connections and contributions with local artists. Here’s my all time favorite song interpreted by her:

The sound quality is rather poor, but it’s possible to hear it using headphones.

Another sing who’s captured my attention was the relatively famous Cesaria Évora, aka the Barefoot Diva, a Cape Verdean. She sings in her country’s creole, which is a mixture of Portuguese with diverse African languages. After studying about it, I can quite understand the lyrics too. Enjoy:

I’ve got to go back to work now – I’ve got new destinations to spare money for.

One thing is for sure: Bucharest does not know what it feels like to be in a post-summer blues mood, as far as live music is concerned. With Madonna’s super concert signaling the end of the summer in late August, some thought that the party’s over. They were so wrong. From September to the end of the year there are dozens of live concerts spread all over the Romanian capital. We chose the best 16 and present them to you.
more…