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Cesaria Evora “Death of the soulful barefoot diva”
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Submitted by Selbin Kabote on Mon, 26/12/2011 - 1:52pm
The essence of morna is the idea of “sodade”, a profound nostalgia and melancholy which are also features of Portuguese fado, certain South American genres and of the Blues. Cesária Evora’s themes were the vicissitudes of love, the pain of rejection and the suffering of the exile who longs to return home. Cesaria who has died at the age of 70 was born on 27 August 1941 in Mindelo, Sao Vicente, Cape Verde.
Her father died when she was seven, and three years later she was sent to an orphanage because her mother, who worked as a cook, was finding it hard to bring up her seven children. Cesária always retained, however, fond memories of her mother, extolling her in one of her songs: “Next to your oven, you raised us with your black skirt and your little scarf. You showed us who we were.”
By the age of 16 Cesária was working as a seamstress. She had also been singing with a local choir, and a friend suggested that she perform in the bars of Mindelo, where the visiting sailors were in search of some invigorating nightlife.
Initially she was not paid, simply allowed free drinks — encouraging a fondness for cognac that eventually, in the mid-Nineties, forced her to forswear alcohol. Cape Verde gained independence from Portugal in 1975, and fewer ships came to dock at Mindelo. For a time Cesária abandoned singing, and few would have heard of her had not a local musician urged her, in 1985, to try her luck as a performer in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon.
There a Frenchman of Cape Verdean descent, José da Silva, persuaded her to go to Paris, where , in 1988, she recorded an album, La Diva aux Pieds Nus (a reference to her habit of performing without shoes), which won critical acclaim.
Her fourth album, Miss Perfumado (1992), which sold over 300,000 copies worldwide took her popularity beyond France, and Cesária (1995) won her a Grammy nomination. Now in her fifties, she embarked on a highly successful series of international tours. In 1996 she gave a sell-out concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.
In 2003 she won a Grammy in the World Music category for her album Voz D’Amor.
In an interview in 2000, Cesaria Evora said “Our music is a lot of things, some say it’s like the Blues, or jazz. Others say it’s like Brazilian or African music, but no one really knows. ” Cesaria sang mainly in the version of Creole spoken in her homeland.
In 2010, Évora performed a series of concerts, the last of which was in Lisbon on 8 May. Two days later, after a heart attack, she was operated on at a hospital in Paris. On the morning of 11 May she was taken off artificial pulmonary ventilation and on 16 May she was discharged from the intensive care unit and transported to a clinic for further treatment. In late September 2011, Évora's agent announced she was ending her career due to poor health.
On 17 December 2011, Évora died in Sao Vicente, Cape Verde, from respiratory failure and hypertension. She is survived by her three children. Evora will long be remembered for performing songs of sad oceanic beauty in her mellow and simple voice.
Cesária Evora, born August 27 1941, died December 17 2011
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