“At first,
the music was just to cater to Cape Verdean immigrants, but soon, people of
Napoli especially started feeling it, then Rome.”
In the
1980s, that feeling transpired across Lisbon, Paris, Rotterdam, and Boston, as
one the largest waves of migration from a single country, propelled by
political instability and economic uncertainty, sent thousands of Cape Verdeans
to the West’s cities.
Through 18
diverse tracks, this compilation reveals how immigration from the Cape Verde
Islands to Europe and the United States gave us an alternate history of the
electronic music that dominated hearts and minds across the world in the late
1990s. But the story doesn’t start in a major Western cultural hub, rather in
the small cluster of islands 400 miles off the Senegalese coast, and offers an
unparalleled insight into the long-term cultural splendor catalyzed by
migration.
Movement and
mobility are intrinsic aspirations of the human condition. What we’ve come to
know as immigration is as old as civilization. Yet today we measure immigration
through a series of cold data. Immigrants are either condemned as disposable
threats or celebrated as entrepreneurial treasures, rarely occupying a space in
between.
Seldom do we
peer back into the past to examine the tangible and timeless creations born
from the movement of peoples, overlooking cultural innovations arguably ahead
of their time, precursors to consuming global trends.
Cape Verde
today is justifiably hailed as an African political success story, but things
were different in the 1980s.
A war of
independence from Portugal was won in 1975, and Cape Verde suffered the
familiar ills of a society born from colonialism and slavery struggling to
integrate into a globalized world.
This
detachment fostered a yearning to integrate, to connect in anyway possible. The
new found homes in the multiculti metropoles of Europe offered little respite.
Cape Verdean immigrants were deemed “hot blooded,” and perceived as “dropouts”
and “juvenile delinquents.”
The ready
availability of electronic instruments, a doorway to a long denied ‘modernity’
and an anchor in their adopted homes, was seductive.
“Cape
Verdeans were celebrating their independence and with that the dancing became
even more important,” said Val Xalino, an unsung pioneer in the development of
his country’s electronic sound, based in Gothenburg, Sweden. “People wanted to
hear something different. They wanted the synthesizer!”
Emigre
musicians began traveling to and from Europe and their home islands, their
luggage containing stock of synthesizers and MIDI instruments. Travel to the
countryside to learn the rhythms of rural farmers became common. The melodies
of the charmingly off-tune, often damaged accordions were transplanted onto
synthesizers.
A cultural
supply chain was established. Largely detached from global capitalism, music
perhaps was, and in many ways still is, Cape Verde’s most effective gateway to
synthesize with the world; immigration the engine and lifeblood.
The hearts
and minds of a musically-inclined people were captured. One mercurial
youngster, Paulino Vieira, arguably Cape Verde’s most important musician, the
real mastermind behind the islands’ melodic majesty, was especially drawn to
keyboard instruments, having honed his skills at a Catholic seminary. He
arranged or contributed to half the songs in this release.
Vieira was
an integral member of Cesaria Evora’s backing band, and while her
cavaquinho-driven traditional songs registered Cape Verde as a cultural force
worldwide, an electronic movement burgeoned just beneath the surface.
It soon
found its headquarters in Lisbon, where Vieira had emigrated at age 18 to lead
a reworked Voz de Cabo Verde, the commanding, enigmatic ensemble that enticed
Cape Verdean musicians from around the diaspora to collaborate.
“Paulino was
the most visionary,” said Elisio Gomes, a Paris-based singer who collaborated
with Vieira often. “He always had this gift to be 10 years ahead of his time.
That’s why our music sounds like it was produced today.”
Largely
overlooked outside the Lusophone realm, Cape Verde’s Astro-Atlantic gumbo of
instrumentation and rhythm offers a timely lesson of migration’s power to
produce cultural innovations ahead of its time. This unknown, ultra-progressive
sound could not have been perfected without the induction of Cape Verde’s
artistic human capital into the West.
As we watch
with heavy hearts the tragic crisis unfolding across the Mediterranean, as
people fleeing similar circumstances strive to settle in Europe, a measured
hint of patience will ultimately justify their vast inclusion. There are poets,
writers, artists, thinkers, and, of course, musicians, raised in an age of
technology, that are making the treacherous journey by boat, or by land on
foot, from Syria, Eritrea, Libya, Iraq, and elsewhere. Paulino Vieira’s heir,
and lush cultural innovation bound to bear the same fruit, lie among them.
TRACKLISTING
Nós Criola -
Nhú De Ped´Bia
Nanda -
Pedrinho
Corpo Limpo
- Tulipa Negra
Jelivrà Bo
Situaçon - Manuel Gomes
Dança Dança
T’Manche - Val Xalino
Bo Ta Cool -
Jovino Dos Santos
Farmacia -
Abel Lima
Chump Lopes
- Elisio Gomes & Joachim Varela
É Bô
Problema - Tchiss Lopes
Babylon 79 -
Americo Brito
Djozinho
Cabral - José Casimiro
Posse Bronck
- Nho Balta
Lameirao -
Kola
Nova
Coladeira - Cabo Verde Show
Melhor
Futuro - Tam Tam 2000
Chema -
Pedrinho
Mie Fogo -
Dionisio Maio
Canta Cu Alma Magoada - Bana
Canta Cu Alma Magoada - Bana
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