Goats feed on stones around here
by Peggy Seehafer, Anthropologist

Today, everyday life on the Cape Verde Islands is governed by music. Time and music are the greatest riches on the islands, because there are hardly any jobs left. The most important export product of the Cape Verde Islands is “world music”.

The Cape Verde Islands are located between Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope, some 400 miles offshore Western Africa. The islands were uninhabited until the Europeans intruded Cabo Verde in 1466. When they became a Portugese colony in 1495, the xericly dry islands were populated with Portugese prisoners and slaves from Senegal and Guinea. The islands provided a military basis, a reloading point for slave trade and a coal depot for steam ships on their overseas journeys. After 500 years of exploitation and tyranny, the Cape Verde Islands were transformed into a so-called overseas province of Portugal in 1952.

Once, when the Cape Verde Islands were an important hop for cargo ships between South America and Europe, life was pulsing through the port of Mindelo. The harbour was filled with ships, and during their shore leaves the seamen wanted to be entertained with music, women and food. The longing Morna and the vivid Coladeira emerged in quayside bars. Economically, Mindelo did very well until the middle of the last century, when the big ships didn´t call at the small harbour in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean anymore and the place started to grow lonely.

The history of the Cape Verde Islands is coined by the mergence of different provenance and cultures as well as by permanent emmigration and home coming. The people of the Cape Verde Islands is spread all over the world, which might be the main reason for their music to be so versatile. There´s always been brisk exchange with the mainland and people emigrated to the West African coast or to America. At the end of the 20th century, there were more Caboverdians abroad than on the islands. Twenty percent of the cash resources available to the country are gathered by relatives outside the Cape Verde Islands and are transferred to the families back home.

The landscape is so dry that farming doesn´t make any sense, and even goats seem to eat stones. Today 95 percent of all food has to be imported. The only products for export are fish, fish products and sea salt. There is no functioning economy or businesses, the only reasonable activity is fishing. He or she who is young and healthy, emigrates. Nevertheless, there´s a climate of social peace on the Cape Verde Islands today. The Atlantic Ocean isolates the islands while protecting them at the same time, that´s why the islanders are poor, but live in peace.

Smoking, gambling and drinking the remaining men spend entire days in the bars. That´s where the singers and musicians with their Cavaqinhos, the Cape Verdian guitars, play concerts every evening, even if a set of guitar strings is as much as the fee for the whole evening. They know and play dozens and hundreds of Mornas, their typical songs, which are world-famous by now. The atmosphere of this Cape Verdian blues is melancholy and contemplative, the lyrics are full of longing, nostalgia and desire. The sad singing of the Morna is typically accompanied by the Cavaquinho, the guitar, the violin and a 10-string guitar.

Cavaquinhos are small, almost tiny guitars with four strings and a light sound. The measure is 340 mm only. Traditionally the strings are tuned d’-g’-b’-d’ (afinação tradicional). Latterly the strings of the Cavaquinhos are more frequently tuned like the four high strings of a guitar d’-g’-b’-e’’ (afinação natural) and played with a plectrum. Originally the Cavaquinho comes from Portugal and has spread as far as Brazil via Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde. As to the Brazilian Samba, it is mostly used as a rhythm instrument.

Cavaquinho built by Jon Piguet

The most popular, widely spread and heavily minor kind of music is the Morna, played at very slow time. The style of the Morna is often compared to the Portuguese Fado. Musicians and audience comfortably dandle to the music. In a Morna you can hear the soul of Cape Verde, whereas the humorous and even sarcastic Coladeira, which is derived from the Morna, is much more rythmic and suited for dancing. It is more influenced by Carribean sounds and the Brazilian Samba.

At the moment, the most famous musician of the Cape Verde Islands is Cesaria Evora. Her CD "Café Atlantico" conveys the image of a whole nation. The city of Mindelo is nothing but a quayside bar that became an orphan, although you can still guess its old glamour beneath the red and brown dust of the decades. Whenever Cape Verdians return from emigration to their city with its ailing Portuguese colonial buildings and its crumbling quays in the harbour, they feel the disconsolation of their archipelago without rain or work, full of dust and sun. And they feel their roots and their home, which is now a paradise compared to earlier centuries.

And the Cavaquinho plays an imporant role in the music and thus in the life of the Cape Verdians. Especially it always goes along with the Morna.


http://www.piguetguitars.com/

http://www.anthropologen-kontor.com

July 13, 2005