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South Florica Sun-Sentinel, Feature / Concert Preview >>
Cloaked in heritage
Singer puts her body and soul into the Cape Verdean music of her parents' homeland.
BY AARON COHEN
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
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 debut album, Di Korpu Ku Alma (Of Body and Soul, she dances her way across the islands' beaches and abandoned railroad tracks.
Lura, who visits the Carnival Center on Friday, covers the breadth of Cape Verde's diversity. But she grew up and continues to live in Portugal, so the singer had an outsider's perspective in some regards, and her enthusiasm for her parents’ seemingly foreign sounds took a little while to flourish.
"At the beginning, I thought Cape Verdean music was just a style for parents," Lura says. "I didn't pay a lot of attention."
While Lura initially listened to Stevie Wonder arid 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 in dependence, the immigrants were men and the women stayed in Cape Verde."
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 lip 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, 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 per forming batuku. In this style, women beat a syncopated rhythm (often on stacks of clothes) behind 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.
"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."
IF YOU GO
Lura performs at 8 p.m. Friday at the Carnival Center's Studio Theater, 300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami, Tickets $15, $20. Call 305-949-6722, 866- 949-6722 12/04/06
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