Salif Keita & Cesária Évora - Yamore.

Cesária Évora (the barefoot diva from Cape Verde) sings Yamore with Salif Keita.



Just LOVE the backing group (c:

AWARDS FOR WORLD MUSIC 2004: ARTIST PROFILE
Cesaria Evora is one of the superstars of African music and one of the few world music artists to have crossed over and won a large mainstream following. In France she sells CDs by the hundreds of thousands and can fill venues normally reserved for top rock/pop acts. Not bad for a woman nicknamed 'the barefoot diva' who had never left Cape Verde until she was in her forties.

Evora's fame is almost unique in these media manipulated days – it is not down to her being a sultry young singer or being fed songs by top producers or hyped by a massive marketing campaign. Instead, it literally rests on the weary beauty of her voice and the eloquent morna (Cape Verdean ballads) she sings.

Cape Verde, an isolated archipelago of islands, was one of Portugal's poorest colonies and its people are descended from the African slaves the Portuguese originally imported to work the barren lands. Drought, malnutrition, malaria and famine have blighted Cape Verde and Evora knows all about hard times – born in 1941, her father died when she was seven and by ten she was an orphan. While a teenager she made a reputation singing in bars. Spots on national radio followed. But Cape Verde's isolation and poverty determined that the wider world would not get to hear Evora until she was sent to sing in Portugal in 1985 as a representative of Cape Verde.
Garth Cartwright, October 2003

Cesaria Evora - Sodade

A very popular song performed at Le Bataclan in Paris.