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South Coast Today, Concert Preview >>
-by Keith Powers
Lura may live in Lisbon, but the music she plays "is from Cape Verde. I don't play fado — they play fado in Portugal. I sing morna. Morna is from the islands, and we sing in Crioulo. Fado is from Portugal, and sung in Portuguese. And the instruments are different as well."
The vivacious singer comes to the Zeiterion Performing Arts Center at 7 p.m. Tuesday for a one-night engagement that is part of a world-wide tour. The concert coincides with Cape Verdean Recognition Week in New Bedford.
Lura's music — she's accompanied by piano, violin, the small Portuguese guitar called the cavaquinho, bass, drums and percussion — has influences that range from Brazil to Africa, from Cape Verde to Portugal — and even to American jazz and blues.
The best-known morna singer internationally is Cesaria Evora, for whom Lura sang back-up vocals when she was starting out. But while Evora's style tends to be bluesy and thoughtful, Lura's style — well, there's only one word for it — sexy.
Lura started her career as a dancer, and then began singing when the zouk star Juka asked her to record with him. The duet stayed together only for a short time, but Lura's career as a singer was launched.
Morna-style music reflects the people of Cape Verde themselves. The archipelago of islands off the coast of Senegal was, as Lura points out, "a desert 500 years ago." Faced with poverty, drought and other physical and geographical challenges, emigration for Cape Verdeans is a fact of life. Indeed, there are more Cape Verdeans that live as expatriates than live on the islands themselves. But that makes their music the polymath blend of styles that allows Lura to find attentive and appreciative audiences everywhere she goes.
"The response in Europe is very nice," she says, "and in Australia as well. I've played in lots of world music festivals, and the public is very interested in new sounds. Four hundred years ago, there were many English people on Cape Verde, and now when I sing in England, they feel something familiar in our music. And in America, I think they hear something that reminds them of the blues."
The Crioulo that Lura sings in "is a mix between Portuguese and African dialects," she says. "You can hear it spoken in places as far away as Mozambique and South America, and really in African communities around the world."
On this international tour, Lura sings selections from her most recent recording, "Bonga M'bem di Fora" ("I've Come From Far Away," on the Lusafrica label), as well as other favorites. The tour sends her to such diverse places as Guinea, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and, of course, Cape Verde and New Bedford.
Tickets for Lura's performance are priced at $35 and $30. Five dollars from every ticket will be donated to the Cape Verdean Recognition scholarship fund.
Tickets can be purchased at the box office (10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday) at 684 Purchase St., by phone at (508) 994-2900, or online at www.zeiterion.org. Tickets may also be purchased at Neves Travel, 1545 Acushnet Ave. in New Bedford, (508) 996-1332, and Neves Travel at 1149 Main St., Brockton, (508) 580-3454.
Parking for the performance is available at the adjacent Zeiterion Garage for $2.
For more information about Lura, visit her Web site at www.luracriola.com. 07/01/07 >> go there
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