Even though Cape Verdean music is majority produced in part by self-taught musicians, or whose learning was based on informal playing with family and friends, having as teachers or role models, parents, uncles, siblings or friends. It is not true, how sometimes is said, that music teaching is recent in Read more…
Gláucia Nogueira and Graham Douglas During the 19thcentury, European music (polka, mazurka, waltz, gallop, etc) and other expressions related to dance styles (cotillon, contradança, quadrilha) arrived in Cabo Verde and were the usual types of entertainment until the 1940s. From that point on, they were supplanted by new musical trends. Read more…
Gláucia Nogueira and Graham Douglas Funaná has relatively recent origins and a rich history of transformation. In its first iteration, it was performed with a diatonic button accordion, locally called a gaita, with the accompaniment of the fero, or ferinho, a metal bar struck and scraped with a knife or Read more…
Possibly related to the koladera, or resulting from a similar process, is the talaia baxu, taking its name from the town of Atalaia de Baixo, on the island of Fogo, where it probably originated, and is highly popular. In its tempo is very close to the koladera. Also, like the Read more…
Gláucia Nogueira and Graham Douglas One telling of the origin of the koladera holds that it was born in the old-time dance halls animated by guitars, ukulele, and violin, when at a certain time of the night the melancholic tone of the morna began to sound monotonous. Then, someone would Read more…
Gláucia Nogueira and Graham Douglas Characterized by a melodious style, slow tempo, and 4/4 time, in most cases with sentimental lyrics, the morna sometimes seems close to the Portuguese fado, but its sound also recalls Brazilian samba-canção. The poet, journalist and composer Eugénio Tavares (1867-1930) points out that the morna Read more…
Gláucia Nogueira and Graham Douglas What is currently known as Batuku can be considered the oldest Caboverdean musical genre, originating with the music and dance brought to the archipelago from the fifteenth century, when the islands were populated by slaves from West Africa, beginning on the island of Santiago. Its Read more…