The Story of Morna: Cape Verde's Music of Displacement and Return

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The story of morna: Cape Verde’s music of displacement and return How a music shaped by slavery, epidemics, famine and mass migration travelled the world, narrating stories of suffering and resistance. A violinist known as Nhô Raul performs with other morna musicians in the Cape Verdean Island of Brava By Beatriz Ramalho da Silva 23 May 2021 Mariana dos Santos was 18 years old when she left her home in Cape Verde, the archipelago of volcanic islands off the coast of West Africa, for neighbouring São Tomé and Principe. It was 1954, and she had been given a contract to work picking coffee, coconut and cocoa at a plantation. She joined the thousands of Cape Verdeans leaving the country to work as labourers in other Portuguese colonies – something promoted by the colonial authorities as a way of alleviating demographic pressure on the islands and filling labour gaps abroad. “I felt like it was time, I was grown up enough and I had to go look for a better life,” the now 85-year-old tells Al Jazeera. 2 On the day Mariana was set to leave, her boyfriend João accompanied her to the port with his guitar. He serenaded her until she boarded the ship. “Who showed you / That far away path? / The path / to São Tomé. / Sodade, sodade, / Sodade / …” he sang. “If you write me, / I will write you / if you forget me, / I will forget you…” The song, Sodade, was written down with some modifications by a local salesman, Armando Zeferino Soares. Years later, it would become one of the world’s most famous mornas, a Cape Verdean musical practice believed to date back to the 18th century. A photo of Mariana taken before she left Cape Verde for São Tomé and Principe Born out of the slave trade “Cape Verde is born out of the experience of forced migration,” explains Edson Brito, a historian working at Cape Verde’s Cultural Heritage Institute. The ten-island archipelago is one of the few nations in the world to be born out of the transatlantic slave trade. In the 1400s, Portuguese settlers occupied the islands, turning them into a trading post where enslaved people would be taken from West Africa and trafficked to Europe and the Americas. 3 After the abolition of slavery under the Portuguese empire, recurring droughts and desertification in Cape Verde resulted in periods of famine and epidemics. This led to several eras of mass migration which shaped the history of the nation – like the one that took Mariana to São Tomé and Principe for more than 10 years. It was against this backdrop of emigration and return that morna was born. And in December 2019, it was recognised by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage of humanity. A photo of the first Portuguese colonial exhibition in 1934 where some “cantadeiras” (women singers) from Boavista went to represent Cape Verde Initially performed by women who were brought into the archipelago from West Africa and forced into slavery, improvised songs were used by “Cantadeiras” (women singers) to speak of day-to-day affairs – often taking on a satirical format. “People would be placed on the island and forced to take care of cattle, and it is believed that morna comes from an ancestral African rhythm called Lundum or Landú. Until today, if you travel to Boa Vista island, people still practice Landú in weddings,” explains Brito, who was a member of the commission that provided supporting evidence for the UNESCO application. Despite there being some consensus on the origins of morna amongst the country’s scholars, Cape Verdeans are not always as quick to agree. Brito explains that because of the archipelagos’ fragmentation, people were historically unaware of what happened on neighbouring islands. “When I was travelling throughout the country, most elders would tell me with certainty that morna was born on their island. We are a discontinued country. Only around the 1940s, with the arrival of broadcast radio, does this begin to change.” Over time, morna, also known as “música rainha” (“queen music”), underwent several changes to its melodic and rhythmic characteristics, becoming the slower, more mournful version heard today. Characterised by three dimensions of melody, poetry and dance, morna is often sung in Kriolu, Portuguese-based Creole, though it can be instrumental, too. 4 Famed morna singer Cesária Évora, photographed in 1997 Eugénio Tavares: poet and composer In 1867, Eugénio Tavares was born on the island of Brava. At the age of 12, he started publishing poetry and soon became one of Cape Verde’s most prominent poets and morna composers. Tavares lived through the aftermath of the abolition of slavery in 1875, as well as waves of hunger that led hundreds of Cape Verdeans to leave for the United States. “This period coincides with one of the first periods of mass emigration of Cape Verdeans to North and South America, predominantly the United States and Argentina. Whaling ships would stop for fuel and would take sailors with them,” explains Brito. The Cape Verdeans, who predominantly settled in Boston, New Bedford, Providence and Nantucket Island, took morna with them. Tavares spent a decade in exile in New Bedford, where he started his own newspaper and became a fierce advocate for Cape Verdean independence. The history of Cape Verde is intertwined with stories of migration. Morna reflects this sense of displacement and longing for home Like morna singers and composers who succeeded him – Tavares became a translator of Cape Verdean life – writing extensively of “sodade”, the nostalgia for the homeland, for his cretcheu (loved one), and the uncertainty of return. 5 He won praise for his ability to express the dilemma at the centre of Cape Verdean life, the pain of leaving and the desire to do so in search of better conditions. He equated emigration with sorrow, writing, “We sing with water in our eyes, we dance whilst our soul is grieving.” Speaking of the absence of freedom and decent living conditions on the islands, he wrote in the morna, “Hora di bai” (Time for departure): “Captive body, you go, for you are slave! Oh soul, alive, who will take you?” (“Corpo catibo, Bá bo que é escrabo! Ó alma bibo, Quem que al lebado?”) Cesária Évora: legend The song that Marianas’ boyfriend, João, sang to her that day in 1954 spoke of sodade, a term considered to be “untranslatable” from the Portuguese Saudade, and the latin “solitate” – which embodies the feeling of nostalgia and longing that comes from the absence of someone or something in the past. Years later, the modified version was arranged by the Cape Verdean musician Paulino Vieira and interpreted by Cesária Évora, the legendary Cape Verdean singer and Grammy award winner who died in 2011. Sodade became one of the most recognised tracks in the 1992 Grammy-nominated album, “Miss Perfumado”, which marked Évora’s commercial breakthrough. A young Cesária Évora, in a photo taken in the 1960s 6 Growing up in the port city of Mindelo, Évora began singing as a teenager in sailor taverns. Évora would later recall how as a young girl she would sing in the city square, explaining in an interview, “I did it to keep the sad things away.” She became a familiar face throughout the island, known for her soulful voice. In the warm nights of Sao Vicente, Cize, as she was affectionately known, was a regular presence in cafés and bars, often singing on the Portuguese ships that disembarked on the Mindelo harbour. But it wasn’t until 1988, when she was 47 and living in Paris, that her international career began. She would sing of love, longing and often about her little island of Sao Vicente. It was not only mornas, but often coladeiras – a more upbeat genre of Cape Verdean music, and other rhythms of the islands that Évora brought with her. Interpreting a morna by the composer Manuel D’Novas called “Sombras di distino” (“Shadows of destiny”), Évora sang, “My life is rootless / like the fate of a Cape Verdean son / With a fickle peace (…) My fate is to suffer / In nostalgic silence.” Her warm vocals sometimes concealed the gravity of the stories she narrated, speaking of suffering and resilience. In an interview with the Portuguese newspaper Público she explained, “Nobody understands Creole, but that’s not important. The music says everything. They understand the music.” In a morna, “Paraíso di Atlantico” (“Atlantic Paradise”) written by the same composer, Évora meditated on the conflicted relationship with her homeland. Cape Verde is a broad-leaved tree Planted in the middle of the Atlantic Its branches have spread out Throughout the world Each leaf is a beloved son Who has gone far, venturing abroad In search of a better And more dignified future Our people are united In peace and social grace Cape Verde, small and cherished, Cradle of love and nostalgia Paradise of the Atlantic 7 Cesária Évora, photographed in 1991 B’léza: acclaimed composer As the audiences for Évora’s music grew, the accolades started to arrive. But she remained unchanged: an inimitable presence on stage, carrying the stories of the archipelago and the words of its poets throughout the world. One of these poets was Francisco Xavier da Cruz, also known as B’léza, one of Cape Verde’s most acclaimed morna composers, and Évora’s cousin. B’léza was known for his distinct lyricism which launched him into fame in the 1940s. Growing up on the island of Sao Vicente, B’léza’s parents worked for British employers, as did many Cape Verdeans on the island.

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