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Chicago Tribune, Concert Preview >>
Singer lends her voice to music from Cape Verde
By Aaron Cohen
Special to the Tribune
January 22, 2006
Even if stylish music videos are produced infrequently in Cape Verde,
singer Lura makes herself right at home in the visual medium and the land. On the DVD that accompanies her disc, "Di Korpu Ku Alma" [Of Body And Soul] (Escondida), she dances her way across the islands' beaches and abandoned railroad tracks. But Lura's enthusiasm for the country took a little while to flourish.
Lura, who visits Chicago this week, covers the breadth of Cape Verde's diversity. But as she grew up and continues to live in Portugal, the singer had an outsider's perspective, in some regards. As the daughter of immigrant parents, her initial reluctance to approach her mother and father's seemingly foreign sounds is a universal situation.
"At the beginning, I thought Cape Verdean music was just a style for
parents," Lura says from her manager's office in Lisbon. "I didn't pay a lot of attention."
While Lura initially listened to Stevie Wonder and Anita Baker, the Cape Verdean emigre community was evolving. She was born in 1975, the same year as the nation's independence. Lura says that this event altered immigration patterns.
"You would see a lot of women coming to Portugal to immigrate and study," Lura says. "Before independence, the immigrants were men and the women stayed in Cape Verde."
Women and art
This shift became especially significant for the arts, according to Gunga Tavares, cultural attache of the Cape Verdean consulate in Boston (New England has been the hub of Cape Verdeans and their descendants in the United States).
"Women have always been the ones to pass on the culture and the music to the kids," Tavares says. "When they immigrate, you see that explosion of music in the immigrant world as well."
By the time Lura turned 14, she became wrapped up in the colors and sounds of this increasingly vibrant Cape Verdean community in Lisbon.
"I felt that the Cape Verdean people had a different way of life," Lura
says. "They had a different style. In Lisbon, they are Africans, they live with parties and dances on the street."
After studying dance herself, Lura began singing as musicians noted her unusually deep voice and her apparent ease at making her pitch float above that lower register.
Around Lura's 21st birthday, she made her initial journey to Cape Verde. The singer saw women performing batuku. In this style, women beat a syncopated rhythm (often on stacks of clothes) behind a vocalist who usually improvises. Batuku runs throughout "Di Korpu Ku Alma," but Lura found it formidable, at first.
"When I saw the women singing batuku, I felt like a little girl," Lura
says. "And every time I go to Cape Verde, I know I have to learn more and more."
Batuku is also ideal for an artist, such as Lura, who has an inclusive
perspective, according to Osvaldo Dos Reis, editor of the
Massachusetts-based Cape Verdean magazine Sodade and online site cvmusicworld.com.
"So many styles can be added to batuku and it all goes smoothly," Dos Reis says.
Lura's parents' island, Santiago, is also home to the most prominent West African influences in Cape Verde, including djembe drums. But she also explored other Cape Verdean genres, such as the accordion-driven funana, the sensuality of which once alarmed the Catholic Church. Later on, Lura investigated the minor-key morna, which resembles the world-weary laments of Portuguese fado.
In the late 1990s, Lura sang with Cesaria Evora, the European-based Cape Verdean emigre who created a worldwide audience for morna. But a lesser-known songwriter from the country, Orlando Pantera, had an equally significant impact on her work. Pantera died in 2001 before he recorded, so Lura sings five of his compositions on "Di Korpu Ku Alma."
"I thought that this is my music, when I heard him," Lura says. "That this is the way I want to present the music of Cape Verde."
Designed to be complex
Since Lura mixes her songs with Pantera's work, the overall mood runs from dark to joyful with beats for dancing, romance or quiet contemplation.
"In choosing her music and topics, her lyrics are also talking about the
contradictions and emotions of people," Tavares says.
After Lura's tour of the U.S. last fall (including the Chicago World Music Festival in September), she seems more aware of her newfound role as a spokeswoman. So much so that she was determined to conduct this interview with an American reporter in English, even as a Portuguese translator sat nearby. When asked, Lura said she does not think her former mentor, Evoria, is envious of her protege's higher profile.
"I asked her what she thought about my music in general," Lura says. "And she just said, `You have to sing what you really like.' I feel that's
important too."
Lura will perform at 8 p.m. Thursday at HotHouse, 31 E. Balbo Drive; $20; 312-362-9707.
She will also perform at 12:15 Friday at the Randolph Cafe, Chicago
Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St.;. free; 312-744-6630. 01/22/06
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