September 4, 2001
Contact: Susan Gwynne
(805) 893-2098
e-mail: gwynne-s@sa.ucsb.edu

Cesaria Evora, the famed “barefoot diva” of Cape Verde, performs at UCSB Arts & Lectures

Summary Facts:

• Cesaria Evora and her band performing at UCSB
• the world’s greatest interpreter of morna, the slow, rhythmic song-form of Cape Verde
• Evora’s 1999 album Café Atlantico sold 1 million copies worldwide
• Saturday, October 13
• 8 pm / UCSB Campbell Hall
• General: $28/$25, UCSB students: $19/$16
• Tickets/information: UCSB Arts & Lectures at 893-3535

Cesaria Evora, hailed as “world music’s Earth Mother” by Vanity Fair, will perform with her band on Saturday, October 13 at 8 pm in UCSB Campbell Hall. Evora is one of the world’s great interpreters of morna, a lilting song style that combines Cape Verdean rhythms with Portuguese and Brazilian instrumentation and melodies. Her most recent release, São Vicente (Windham Hill, 2001) further stretches her world music affiliations, featuring appearances by Brazilian Caetano Veloso, Cuban Chucho Valdés and American Bonnie Raitt. In a rave review Billboard Magazine called São Vicente “a gorgeous, uplifting album...sorrow never sounded so sweet.”

Evora sings in Crioulo, a Creole mix of Portuguese and West African languages native to Cape Verde. Her evocative, soulful voice—an alto made deeper by cigarettes and cognac—has earned her repeated comparisons to the world’s leading chanteuses: Edith Piaf, Celia Cruz, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday. This stirring voice is a perfect instrument for morna, as the lyrics center on nostalgia, sadness and longing. The New York Times has said, “Her contralto is filled with forbearance and comfort, as if she has seen the worst but can still offer consolation; it is made for slow songs where she can linger over notes that seem to share a wordless sympathy.”

When she was a teenager, Evora began singing in bars and clubs in Mindelo, on the Cape Verde island of São Vicente off the coast of Senegal. The arid Cape Verde archipelago is home to the oldest, most thoroughly Creole culture in the world, and therefore many musical traditions—Brazilian, Portuguese, West African—wash upon its shores. Although highly acclaimed, Evora stopped performing throughout the 1970s, due to financial woes. She returned to performing in the 1980s, and traveled to Paris to record. Her 1988 debut album La Diva aux Pieds Nus, released when she was 47 years old, made her an “overnight” sensation in France. Her success throughout Europe grew with each new album and a rigorous touring schedule that she maintains to this day.

In 1995 Evora came to America to support her first stateside release, a self-titled album on Nonesuch. The album won her the first of four Grammy nominations (she has yet to win the award), sold well and brought her a host of celebrity fans, from Madonna to David Byrne. Since then her U.S. fan base has grown steadily as she has helped spear the latest world music revival that also features the Buena Vista Social Club.

São Vicente, her latest CD, has earned rave reviews and landed her a spot on The Late Show with David Letterman. The disc chronicles the emotional trials and epiphanies of her global travels away from her homeland of Cape Verde. Weary, wise and unwavering, this world traveler sings from her soul a clear-eyed nostalgia free of sentiment. As the Los Angeles Times wrote of a recent performance: “Language in her case became irrelevant. The combination of her own defining qualities with the passionate sense of longing...implicit in the Cape Verdean mornas was irresistible, a musical and emotional force that transcended the specificity of words.”

Presented by UCSB Arts & Lectures and sponsored by Borders Books, Music and Café.

For tickets or more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Susan Gwynne at (805) 893-2098.