Domaine Forget 2024 | Cape Verdean breezes in Charlevoix with Lucibela

Genres and styles : Jazz / musique du monde / Musique traditionnelle

Additional Information

Considered the worthy successor to Césaria Évora, Cape Verdean singer Lucibela takes the repertoire of her native island of São Nicolau to the four corners of the globe. The warm rhythms and deeply human themes that characterize her country’s traditional songs will be heard on the shores of Saint-Irénée (Charlevoix) as part of the Festival international du Domaine Forget. We had the opportunity to correspond with Lucibela a few days before the concert, which takes place on Saturday July 13.

PAN M 360: Hello Lucibela. Thank you for taking some time with us. It’s safe to say that you’ve not been stalling since your arrival in Canada! You recently performed at the FestiVoix in Trois-Rivières, and you have other concerts scheduled in Montreal and Ottawa before your July 13 concert at the Festival international du Domaine Forget in Saint-Irénée. How is your stay so far?

Lucibela: My stay has been very pleasant, and the music of Cape Verde has been very well received by the Canadian public. I love to see how people welcome our tradition with open arms, while others, who already knew our music thanks to our Cise [Césaria Évora], are happy to hear it again. This is my second tour of Canada, and I had missed the good hospitality of the Canadian people. The first took place in 2019 and we were due to return in 2020, with about 22 concerts, which were unfortunately cancelled due to the COVID 19 pandemic. Fortunately, four years later, we were finally able to come back and continue what we started, which is to bring a bit of Cape Verde, our music, to Canadian audiences.

PAN M 360: Can you tell us a little about the program you’ll be performing at the festival?

Lucibela: Certainly. I’ll be presenting excerpts from my second album, Amdjer (Woman), as well as songs from my first album, Laço Umbilical (Umbilical Cord), which the general public loves to hear. A repertoire of mornas and coladeiras that depict the daily life of Cape Verdeans and transport us to Cape Verde. It’s music to listen to, to feel and to dance to, accompanied by musicians who have this tradition in their blood and who carry this love for our music.

Two of them have accompanied our Cise around the world, and I’m lucky enough to have had them with me at the start of my career. Toy Vieira (seven-string guitar) is a multi-instrumentalist, composer and music producer. He has produced both my albums and is also my musical director. Then there’s Zé António (cavaquinho), one of Cape Verde’s finest traditional cavaquinho players.

The other musicians haven’t played with Cise, but they too have a strong link with traditional Cape Verdean music, and without them I wouldn’t have this wonderful group that accompanies me and gives me strength. Nir Paris (drums), from a well-known Cape Verdean family of musicians, is a prodigy of our traditional music. Finally, César Lima (guitar) is a highly respected musician who accompanies some of Cape Verde’s greatest artists.

PAN M 360: Among the musical genres you carry and promote abroad are morna and coladeira. What is the history of these genres and what are their stylistic specificities?

Lucibela: Cape Verde is rich in rhythms, but I’ve mostly sung mornas and coladeiras. I’ve also recorded mazurkas, boleros and a few coladeiras with a touch of samba about them. The morna is one of Cape Verde’s oldest genres and is part of humanity’s intangible cultural heritage. In fact, no one knows which came first, morna or fado. It’s a musical genre with a slower tempo that mainly evokes love and stories of everyday life.

Coladeira also depicts these stories, but is a more danceable and joyful genre. It often recounts amusing facts about Cape Verdean life. In fact, it is said that each morna, when played at a faster tempo, becomes a coladeira.

PAN M 360: What influence has Césaria Évora had on your career and your identity as an artist?

Lucibela: Césaria Évora, as everyone knows, opened the doors of the world to our music and was extremely well received. It’s clear that we, as traditional music artists, have benefited from this. When we talk about Cape Verde, we inevitably talk about Césaria Évora. This link is inseparable, and she will always be one of the greatest references of our music and culture. I want to continue to share our tradition with the world, and I want to do it with my heart. Because that’s what I love to do. So, yes, of course, it has also contributed to the expansion of my career.

I started singing Brazilian music at the age of 7 or 8, because Brazilian music was very present on the radio in Cape Verde. But I also used to listen to my mother humming mornas while she cleaned the house. As I grew up, I became interested in traditional music and was already listening to Césaria Évora, as well as Bana and Ildo Lobo. They are excellent references for morna. Little by little, I began to listen to traditional music, and when I started doing Cape Verdean parties in bars, around the age of 18, I started to listen to them even more. Today, they and Césaria are my references when it comes to morna and coladeira.

PAN M 360: The themes found on your two albums deal with attachment to Cape Verde, nostalgia and exile, as well as love and women. Why are these themes important to you, and what messages do you want to convey through them?

Lucibela: I’ve always listened to love songs and they’ve always touched me. I love the idea of “singing” love, a universal theme that everyone understands, and “singing” our stories. When I choose songs for my albums, I like to think that I’m singing the tradition of a people, so I choose songs that reflect that tradition. Women are the pillars of our society and deserve to be treated with more respect. That’s why I pay tribute to them on my second album. I like to tell the story of Cape Verdean mothers, most of whom are forced to raise and support their children alone, as mine was. They fight, and even though they face many difficulties, they manage to give their children a future. I like to think that songs really depict who we are, that they tell it like it is. But it’s not all sad stories, there are also a lot of humorous songs that, in a funny way, always give us a life lesson.

PAN M 360: If you had to choose one song from your repertoire, or from the repertoire of Cape Verdean music, which would you say is the most emblematic and representative of the archipelago, and why?

Lucibela: The best-known song from Cape Verde is undoubtedly “Sodade”, sung by Cise. It’s a song that represents the nostalgic people we are. Cape Verdeans are a people who emigrate a lot, and the word saudade [nostalgia] is always on our lips. We are undoubtedly very attached to our culture, our food and our people.

I have a lot of favorite songs. But if you asked me to sing just one, I think I’d sing “Mi e Dod na Bo Cabo Verde”, which means “I’m crazy about you Cape Verde”.

PAN M 360: What are your next musical projects? Are there any plans for a new album or new songs?

Lucibela: Yes, I have a new album coming out at the end of October, with previously unreleased songs by well-known Cape Verdean composers, and also old songs in a new form, somewhat in line with the previous ones. There will also be a song of my own.

The launch concert for this album is scheduled for November in France.

I’m also part of the Césaria Évora Orchestra project, and we’ll be giving concerts in Morocco, France, Poland and Luxembourg over the coming months.