Barefoot in the Park

In preparing for my visit to the Cabo Verdes I got connected with a friend of a friend who had lived on the islands for several years. In our tennis match of emails, he claimed that per capita the Cabo Verdes had more musicians than any other country in the world. While a bit of a subjective measure, after a couple weeks in-residence I agree.

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When I would tell landlubbers (i.e., non-transatlantic sailors) that I was going to visit the Cabo Verde Islands, invariably the initial questions would revolve around the where and what.

To address the “where,” the Cabo Verdes are off the West Coast of Africa, about 350 miles west-northwest of Senegal’s capital of Dakar. The city of Dakar is located on Cap Vert (Green Cape), the namesake of the archipelago. To get a sense of the Cabo Verde’s landmass and dispersion, imagine the United State’s smallest state—Rhode Island—at roughly 20 miles east-to-west and 40 miles north-to-south. Now divide Rhode Island into 10 islands and scatter them in a horseshoe pattern over 160 miles of otherwise open ocean.

As to the “what,” unlike the Portuguese Madeira Islands or Spanish Canary Islands that Hazel and I had previously visited on this journey, the Cabo Verdes are an independent country. The previously uninhabited archipelago was discovered and claimed by Portugal in 1460 and would not gain its independence until 1975. To compare and contrast, although Brazil was claimed by Portugal roughly 50 years after the Cabo Verdes, but Brazil would win its independence 150 years before the Cabo Verdes. Doing the math, the South American giant was a subject of the Portuguese empire for 320 years, while the diminutive African archipelago for 515 years.

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One of our sailing friends we had recently reconnected with in the Canary Islands had visited the Cabo Verdes several years previously on an east-to-west transatlantic sail. Over a tapas dinner, when I asked him what the islands were like, he responded, “Well, you will certainly know that you are not in the EU anymore.” I found that to be so true. While I don’t know what it was like prior to its 1975 independence, today it has a distinctly African feel seasoned with Portuguese and other European flavors.

That brings us back to the subject of music. While all countries and cultures have distinctive musical styles, it’s different in the Cabo Verdes. In these islands, the music infuses everything. It’s part of the air they breathe. While so many of us view music as nice to have in our lives, for Cabo Verdeans—like air to breathe—the music is fundamental to existence.

If you’re like me and tend to gravitate back into a rut of listening to the same-old-same-old music, try something new and search your streaming service for “Cabo Verdes.” Or, go Cabo-Verdian-genre-specific with one of these search words:

• Morna – Generally considered the national music of the archipelago. It’s slower and melancholic, often focusing on love and longing. (Spotify suggestion here.)
• Coladeira (or Coladera) – Loosely translated to English as “to dance” or “dancing,” and upbeat and lively as compared to Morna. (Spotify suggestion here.)
• Funaná – Featuring accordion and percussion, it’s rooted in rural Cape Verdian traditions and reflects everyday life and experiences. (Spotify suggestion here.)
• Tabanka – Is the traditional music of the Cape Verdian island of Santiago with intricate rhythms for community dances. (Spotify suggestion here.)

It’s worth noting that within the national genre of Morna is the sub-genre or thematic expression of sodade: ruminations of longing, homesickness, and nostalgia. Fitting for a people whose diaspora is larger than the population living “at home,” on the islands.

When it comes to music, Cabo Verdians truly put their money where their mouth is—literally. Their currency, the Cape Verdian escudo, doesn’t feature images of political or military leaders but of musicians.

As a quick aside, “escudo” originally meant a shield or emblem. Late Middle Age coins were stamped with shields and emblems so the word “escudo” began to be associated with currency. Portugal brought the Portuguese escudo to the Cabo Verdes during the colonial period. With the Cabo Verdes’ 1975 independence from Portugal, the Cabo Verdean escudo and is used to this day. (Portugal contained to use its escudo until it adopted the euro in 2002.)

By introducing you to Cesária Évora I hope I’m telling you something you didn’t know, because—similar to me discovering Mustafa Kemal Atatürk on our visit to Istanbul last spring—I knew nothing of Cesária Évora prior to my time in the Cabo Verdes. If juxtaposing Atatürk and Évora—the two heroes, their heroes’ quests, and the settings couldn’t have been more different—but the paradigm was identical. They are national treasures and were penultimate bookends to our season’s voyage.

In the spring of 2024 after departing from the US, our second destination was a land-based month in Istanbul and Turkey (We first made a quick stop in Athens to check on Hazel James.) While straddling the European and Asian continents, we discovered the icon of Atatürk (1881-1938) his image and signature were everywhere in Turkey. Doing some quick study we learned that he is unquestionably the father of the modern Turkish state (see my initial post about him here). Several months later when Rhett, Sunny, and I visited Thessaloniki (Greece’s second largest city after Athens) I toured his birthplace and was again blown-away by his rockstar status (see post here).

Similarly, in my first couple days in the Cabo Verdes after I got over my initial culture shock, I began to notice that every tenth or so Cabo Verdean wearing a t-shirt with this image…

I was confused but I couldn’t immediately pinpoint why. After some thought, it occurred to me that the vast majority of t-shirt images are blunt and to-the-point. Regardless of whether it is advertising or a salty missive, the t-shirt’s emblazonment is meant to be recognized and understood in the few seconds it takes two human beings to walk past each other. What confused me about this shirt was the woman’s expression. Was it remorse? Agony? Deep meditation? Ecstasy? Or some combination?

I asked a stranger on the street about who was on her shirt and she looked at me as if I had two-heads and replied, “Why it’s the Barefoot Diva of course!” That retort served two purposes: first to pique my interest; and second, to give me a vital clue to solve the mystery.

Cesária Évora was born in 1941 in Mindelo (the largest town on the island of São Vicente, where Hazel was berthed). Her father was a violinist and died when she was young, her mother a cook and maid who struggled to provide for her children as a single parent. At 10 Évora was moved to an orphanage as it was deemed that her family could not support her. At 16 she began performing in local bars. Her residing in Mindelo was a lucky break given the abundant nightlife in the international port town.

As with Atatürk in Turkey, it’s hard to overemphasize Évora’s enduring presence in Mindelo and the Cabo Verdes. In a culture awash in music, she is the undisputed goddess of the waters. To this day, her 2004 Grammy Award for Best World Music Album is source of great national pride (the album was Voz d’Amor [Voice of Love], a great listen and Spotify link here).

It seems that her moniker of Barefoot Diva has both steadfast and shifting elements to it. While throughout her entire career she performed without shoes, in the early days there was likely a financial element to it as footwear would have been unaffordable. Over time, it became a signature element of her stage persona, demonstrating humility, a connection to the traditional Cabo Verdean ways of life and the struggles of her people—with a strong dose of social commentary.

Today she is probably the worldwide best known Cabo Verdean and in her country—like Atatürk in Turkey—is revered as a national treasure.

She generally sang in Cabo Verdean Creole (or Kriolu)—a mixture of West African languages, Portuguese, and other influences. This choosing to sing in her native tongue both increased her stature in the islands and also allowed her lyrics to protest social and gender inequality without raising the hackles of international music producers.

The story above is as much of Cesária Évora as I had learned in my couple weeks in the Cabo Verdes. At the time, based on my limited data points. I had made the assumption that her musical career had traced a sweeping arc—from humble beginnings, to playing in local clubs at 16, to larger and larger in-country venues and audiences, to international recognition and a Grammy Award. However, in digging deeper for this blog post I’ve since learned that her path was a discontinuous journey of initial recognition, followed by retreat and retrenchment (nearly fading away into a pianissimo of nothing), then—in a classic hero’s journey—the coda of her career and life is an inspirational crescendo of redemption. Although well known in the 1950s and 1960s in the Cabo Verdes and with some international exposure in Portugal and the Netherlands, she found she couldn’t support herself and her three children as a relatively unknown singer. Gender inequality exacerbated her situation as the then-prevailing Cabo Verdean mindset was that music was a singularly masculine activity. Given those realities, in the 1970s she retired from music and she and her family were forced to move in with her mother.

In 1985 the Organization of Cape Verdean Women asked her to contribute songs to an anthology of women’s music. That break started her reentry into music and building the legacy that lasts to this day. She would later recall her decade away from music as her “dark years.”

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There are a couple postscripts to this post:

First, what got me thinking of the parallels between Atatürk and Évora was a rather incongruous art and souvenir shop that I stumbled into. In the throughly African town of Mindelo, the Turkish-Cabo Verdean mash-up of “Istanblue” was eye-catching to say the least.

Although I visited the store, I never found out the connection between Istanbul and Mindelo. However, had I not spent the time in Istanbul and Turkey last spring the references would have totally gone over my head.

Finally—and our second coda to this piece—Max and I took a couple guided tours of the Cabo Verdean islands of São Vicente and Santo Antão. As our very tall and excellent guide Rui walked us around the town of Mindelo, we visited the park of Praça Nova (New Square). The park was established during the colonial era (when the Cabo Verdes were a colony of Portugal). Rui commented that during much of the colonial era, the square was expressly off-limits to anyone who was barefoot—ostensibly for hygiene’s sake but the underlying reason was clearly to keep the poor people out.

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Fair winds and following seas.