By Andrew Gilbert, Globe Correspondent  |  December 3, 2006

Cesaria Evora's rise to prominence in the late 1980s put the West African nation on the international musical map, and outside the Lusofone (Portugese-speaking) world she has continued to reign as the sole voice of the nation. But with a confluence of influences from Portugal, Brazil, and West Africa nurturing a musical culture as rich as the islands are barren, a new generation of Cape Verdean singers is coming to the fore.

Sara Tavares, Fantcha, Maria de Barros, Gardenia Benrós, and Maria Alice have all released impressive albums with distribution in the United States and Europe. None, however, is better placed to step onto the world stage than Lura, who returns to the Berklee Performance Center on Saturday for a reprise of her triumphant September 2005 debut.

"Cesaria is like our mother," says Lura, 31, who was featured on an extensive 2001 European tour, Cesaria & Friends. "She makes Cape Verdean culture known all over the world. She does it very seriously, and I learned a lot with her. I learned where my place is in music from Cape Verde and what I have to do."

Delivering contemporary songs in Cape Verdean Crioulo with her deep, sultry contralto, Lura is a captivating performer steeped in traditional styles but interested in a vast range of sounds. Born and raised in Lisbon, she started her career as a dancer, but realized she had a gift for singing when Cape Verdean-born zouk star Juka recruited her to record with him. The duet was a minor hit, and the teenage budding singer suddenly started receiving requests from established figures such as Tito Paris, Paulinho Vieira, and Angola's Bonga.

She recorded her first album , "Nha Vida , " in 1996 and made a splash when the title track was included on the 1997 AIDS benefit compilation "Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon " alongside pieces by stars such as Caetano Veloso, Djavan, Marisa Monte, and k.d. lang.

Like a number of other young Cape Verdean singers, Lura is determined to spread awareness of styles beyond the lilting minor key mornas and sprightly coladeras popularized by Evora. Instead, she's delved into accordion-based funana , a sensuous style long repressed by Cape Verde's Portuguese colonial administration before independence in 1975, and batuku , a rhythm that originated among groups of women beating folded stacks of clothes, accompanied by topical, often satirical improvised verses.

Her gorgeous third album, 2005's "Di Korpu Ku Alma " (Lusafrica), features five batukus, including her signature tunes "Na Ri Na" and "Vazulina," by Orlando Panteira , a gifted composer who died before he had a chance to release his own album. "Di Korpu" also features a separate DVD shot during a 2004 concert opening for Evora at Le Grand Rex Theatre in Paris that captures Lura's infectious, youthful energy.

"There's a new generation, and I'm just a piece of a puzzle," Lura says. "We sing and play traditional music from Cape Verde with influences from all over the world -- soul, reggae, blues, samba."

If anyone deserves credit for Lura's rising profile in the United States, it's her manager Luis Barros, a Cape Verdean-born, Boston-based music industry veteran who worked with L.A. Reid and Kenny "Babyface" Edmonds's hugely successful LaFace Records. Since he started representing Lura in North America, he has facilitated her signing with the powerful talent agency ICM Artists and engineered her appearance at last year's globalFEST, which ushered her into the coveted performing-arts center and festival niche. He has also worked with Maria de Barros and Sara Tavares, who is slated to perform next month at globalFEST in New York.

"I grew up around the music, and I know it pretty deeply from around the house," Barros says. "Lura resurrected funana, a genre that was popular when I was kid. Artists like Lura and Sara Tavares, they use the foundation of the past, and put their own spin on it."

Barros's fruitful efforts with Lura are part of a larger campaign, including his Cape Verde Festival concert series at Scullers, to bring his homeland's music to wider American audiences. Lura's Boston performance is part of a 14-city US tour that includes several high-profile dates, and she'll return to the States in April to coincide with the US release of her next album, "M'Bem Di Fora, " on Times Square Records.

"I have a broader agenda," Barros says. "I believe our music hasn't been appropriately packaged and presented. Cesaria was the model, but nobody is going to replicate that. So we're looking for ways to showcase the great amount of Cape Verdean talent in an already crowded market."

In some ways, the fact that Lura was born outside of Cape Verde makes her a particularly apt representative for the country. Instead of being tied to the sounds of one particular island, she claims the entire archipelago as her muse. Rather than simply absorbing Cape Verdean culture, she made a decision to embrace it after her mother discouraged her from speaking Crioulo as a child.

"I'm from Santiago and from São Nicolau ," Lura says. "I feel I can show other people all the different rhythms and styles. Sometimes there's a little chauvinism inside. For example, the people of Sao Vicente think that it's the best, that all the beautiful things are happening there and the other islands are not very good. I'm trying to show that every island has something good, and that we compliment and need each other."