The Cape Verdean musical genre known as morna can be likened to many styles, including Brazilian modinha and Portuguese fado, but its closest cousin may well be the blues.

Morna is a mournful-yet-hopeful genre, usually sung in Cape Verdean Creole, and its best-known voice belongs to Cesaria Evora.

The 65-year-old folk singer will share the music of her native Cape Verde with local fans during two Bay Area performances this weekend. She is set to appear Saturday at the Nob Hill Masonic Center, as part of  JAZZ's Spring Season, and Sunday at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga.

During a recent interview, with Evora's assistant, Julieta Mala Lopes, interpreting, the vocalist spoke of her most recent CD, 2006's "Rogamar." For starters, she explained why she chose the title, which can be loosely translated as "pray to the sea."

"The sea is very important to the life of each Cape Verdean," Evora said from a tour stop in Portugal. "In each record, I always have a song about the sea. We cannot live without the sea."

Ironically, it was the sea that might have kept Evora from achieving international renown much earlier in her career.

The Republic of Cape Verde consists of a small cluster of islands off the western coast of Africa. For generations, many local musicians entertained fellow Cape Verdeans and the occasional batch of tourists, but otherwise operated in isolation from the rest of the world.

Evora was a member of that club for much of her career. 

The vocalist — known as the original "Barefoot Diva" for her penchant for taking the stage without shoes — began performing when she was a teenager. She decided to get serious about singing after receiving sound advice from her heart-throb at the time.

"I started when I was 16 years old with a group of young people who were playing guitars. I came to them and started to sing," she said. "One of them, who was my boyfriend, said, 'Sing harder, because you have a nice voice.' I went on singing and I never stopped.

Well that's not exactly accurate. She quickly rose to stardom in her native land in the late '60s, then announced midway through the next decade that she was giving up the stage. The early retirement was partly due to the fact that Evora — although still quite popular in Cape Verde couldn't translate fame into fortune while operating solely as a local attraction.

She remained silent for 10 years. Then, in 1985, she decided to give the music business another try and left Cape Verde to record in Europe. The initial breakthrough came in 1988 when Evora traveled to Paris and taped "La Diva Aux Pieds Nus" ("The Barefoot Diva"), which achieved worldwide critical acclaim.

The vocalist followed with 1992's "Miss Perfumado," which garnered a Grammy nomination and pushed Evora to international stardom. Suddenly she was a hot commodity on the world-music stage and boasted fans such as David Byrne, Bonnie Raitt and Ed Bradley.

Most prominently, Madonna became enamored of the Cape Verdean folk star. In fact, Evora was set to sing at Madonna's birthday party at Gianni Versace's oceanfront estate in Miami in 1997. The murder of the fashion mogul that same year, however, put an end to the party planning. Madonna also asked Evora to perform at her wedding in 2000, but plans eventually fell through.

It remains a mutual-admiration society between the Barefoot Diva and the Material Girl. “I was a fan of Madonna when I was not known, in Cape Verde," Evora said, "I like to see Madonna onstage, you know?"

These days, Evora is more popular than ever. Her concerts draw capacity crowds and she continues to win critical acclaim for her CDs. She sounds happy — even speaking from the back ground, with Lopes translating her words on the phone — and that's also how she looks on the cover of Rogamar. Indeed, the absolute joy she radiates on the album-cover shot doesn't carry a hint of the mournful side of her signature morna music.

"My musicians have all these stories and I am always laughing when I am with them. That's why they took this picture and put it in this album," Evora ex plained. On the other side, (Cape Verdeans) are joyful people — we are not sad people as other people say. No. We are people from a poor land, but we are joyful."

-by Jim Harrington