Cesária Évora and the Overture of Routes for Other Cape-Verdean Women's Voices

Abstract

From Europe - where multiple post-colonial migrant communities reside, including Cape Verdean communities - the music industry has helped to build an environment whose reception extends beyond the diasporic communities it hosts, and extends beyond the continent's borders. However, it is a symbolic export, since the country has a residual music industry and most of its musicians in the popular music scene lives outside the country and mainly in Europe, where they record, produce and disseminate their music. If until the 1990s the voices of Cape Verde were fundamentally represented by male, it was after the work of Cesária Évora (1941-2011) that a new scenario was opened for women, marked by the legacy of the “diva dos pés descalços” (barefoot diva). I refer to singers such as Carmen Souza, Lura, Mayra Andrade, Nancy Vieira or Sara Tavares, women of Cape Verdean origin whose artistic activity developed essentially from the diaspora in Europe. In this paper, I analyse the places of performance, the phonographic production and the discourses about Cesaria to discuss 1) her role in the invertion of a masculine tradition of Cape Verdean Popular Music and, 2) her legacy to the second generation of Cape Verdean singers.