About Me
Son of an islandWhat was it that made Cape Verde emerge as a center for the production of what all acknowledge to be quality music? For some, the answer is simple: Cape Verde is made up of islands, and islands, all of them, are spaces of musical creativity. As if music were a bridge meant to overcome insularity, a cry against the timeless solitude, a prayer intended to defeat distances and fading memories.
For others, the answer lies not in geography but in the soul of the mestizo, the product of the crossing of cultures, and in the historical ease with which island territories welcome and blend different influences together. The existence of the islander is sitting on the beach, watching those who come and go, divided between his ageless roots and a permanent farewell.
The destiny of those condemned to pray is song: this could be another attempt at explaining the musical aptitude of one of Africa’s youngest nations.
I don’t believe that these kinds of things need an explanation. Today, music has given visibility to an African country. Being intimately and immediately associated with art on a continent that makes news only through disgrace is a rare and privileged condition.
But this privilege comes with a catch. The same system that has helped project Cape Verde in the world could end up diluting that which is profoundly original and diverse in Cape Verdean music. In other words, the international success of Cape Verde’s music today constitutes its greatest obstacle. The challenge is simple and perverse: it is expected that this art will remain faithful to itself and easily recognizable, but it is this very simplification that will end up defeating it and making it banal. Thus, we may hope that Cape Verdean music will place itself in check and, in and of itself, invent new aspects of Cape Verdeanness.
Mário Lúcio is aware of this challenge and has long since chosen to forge new paths and to lend sonority to other traditions that, being authentic, are openly and consciously reinvented. His career with the group Simentera confirms this concern with permanent reinvention and boldness. In this album, he has made the reinvention of tradition a weapon that will keep Cape Verde’s musical patrimony from being folklorized as “world music†or from running the risk of being nothing more than a passing fashion or object of mere ethnographic worth.
Here is another Cape Verde, another Mário Lúcio who is not just a son of the island. Here is an album that has been long awaited and that surprises us and turns us, its listeners, into islanders and boats overcoming the sea.Mia Couto
