By Tayloe McConnell

An ocean separates us. Me with my limited American cultural background and she with her rich West African culture deeply rooted in music and history.

A speaker phone and tour manager/interpreter stands between us, too. 'Her name is Lura and we try our best to understand one another as we speak about her new album, Di Korpu Ku Alma, while she is in Albuquerque on the second stop of her U.S. tour. She speaks in Portuguese but sings predominantly in Kriolu, the language of' her father’s country, Cape Verde, an archipelago 300 miles off the coast of West Africa, it is the home the first European colony in Africa, established in 1462.

Although Lura was born and raised in Lisbon, an emigre community of Cape Verde, her father is from Santiago, the most African of the Cape Verde islands.

While Cape Verde was under colonial rule for more than 500 years, the church and colonial government forbid many forms of the island’s traditional music. These forms were deemed too erotic until Cape Verde’s 1975 independence liberated them. Now these rich musical traditions, like the accordion-driven funana and the rhythmic batuku, are free to emerge.

Lura describes both batuku and funana to me. "Batuku is a kind of music de rived from the island of Santiago. Women used them as a way for them to dance and sing. It was also part of the slave culture there," she says. "Both funana and batuku were banned during colonialism, but batuku is actually played more by men. There are different styles of funana, but it is very rhythmic, very catchy, very dancy." She says that in the beginning funana was sung in improvisation using two unique instruments from Cape the ferro, a metal rod played with a kitchen knife, and the gaita, a harmonic accordion. But she has taken the group improvisational singing of batuku and sings it alone.

Cape Verde’s population has mostly immigrated to various parts of the world because drought and economic limitations force many of them to live abroad. Lura is touched by the daily emotions of her people living in Cape Verde. She sings about the sadness and longing felt by those left by their loved ones.

Her songs 'So Um Cartinha" and "To Martins" are about that longing, or as she says, "the very normal feeling people have in highly emigrant communities.” They are sung with her deep voice and its sensual inflections. Highly influenced by Cesaria Evora, one of Cape Verde’s most well-known singers from the island of Sao Vicente whom Lura has toured with, she learned to hold onto her traditions. Evora inspired Lura to write "Tem Um Hora Pa Tude" ("There is a Time for Everything") where she sings, "With my beloved, there is never a time when I don't have everything," She also admires American artists Nora Jones, D.D. Bridgewater and Anita Baker.

As a part of a new generation of West African musicians rediscovering the hidden traditions of her ancestral homeland, Lura knows the importance of sharing the history of her people and its colorful music. "I have extreme pride to presenting a very beautiful culture," she says "a diverse culture that is very rich to music-loving audiences." On her 17-city U.S. tour she will stop in Washington, D.C., and Chicago as well as visiting Arizona for the first time next week.

Lura is playing at Sedona's Future Studios, 30 Hozoni Drive, with her six- piece band on Tue, Sept. 13 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $18 in advance and $22 at the door.