The haunting 'morna' of Cesaria Evora gets high marks from Bay Area fans

By L. PIERCE CARSON, Register Staff Writer

Celebrated throughout Europe -- and more recently on this side of the Atlantic -- for her novel musical talents, soulful singer Cesaria Evora thrilled a cheering throng at the first of two appearances this weekend at UC Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall.

The sixty-something musical diva from the Cape Verde Islands -- a former Portuguese colony off the coast of West Africa -- has been compared to Edith Piaf and Billie Holiday. Yet she sang in local cafes in relative obscurity until middle age -- before a young Frenchman of Cape Verdean descent brought her to Paris in 1988 to record an album.

Other than friends and neighbors in Mindelo, the sunwashed capital of Evora's native island home on Sao Vicente, the French were the first to embrace the soulful interpretations of the region's traditional songs.

Irresistible chanteuse Cesaria Evora paints an imposing, unforgettable figure in her bare feet and subdued black dress. Equally unforgettable is her voice, earthy and rich as she effortlessly sings morna, a slow and rhythmic song form expressing nostalgia, love, sadness and longing, a cousin of the blues sung in Cape Verdean creole.

Performing for audiences throughout the world, Evora has brought international popularity to the morna -- this form of the blues that combines West African percussion with Portuguese fados, Brazilian modhinas and British sea chanteys -- gaining a global audience rivaling that of Brazil's sambas, Argentina's tango and Cuba's son.

With a voice conveying both power and vulnerability, Evora serves up songs that, in part, are rooted in the Portuguese-owned slave plantations of this island off Senegal. Sea traffic brought music from Brazil, Argentina, Great Britain and the Caribbean to Evora's Mindelo, a port city known as "the creole Rome." Her material incorporates the disparate rhythms that washed up on its shore.

Backed by nine-piece orchestra that showcases acoustic instruments -- multiple guitars (including the cavaquinho, a small four-string rhythm guitar), bass, violin, piano, accordion, saxophones and percussion -- Evora offered Friday night a mix of tempos on beautiful, haunting music that, more often than not, speaks to her island home.

Singing a number of songs from her latest recording, "Rogamar," Evora served up a dozen and a half works -- plus a repeat of the festive "Africa Nossa (Our Africa)" -- during the 90-minute performance.

Her demeanor is that of a woman who seems painfully shy, the emotion of the moment expressed in mood and tone rather than in the singer's poker face.

Evora broke from the Cape Verdean creole but once, to deliver in Spanish a most haunting rendition of the well known "Besame Mucho."

Otherwise, the material ran from the syncopated simple seaside story of the new CD's title track, in English, "Pray to the Sea" ("The little boat rolls on its way in the bay, On its daily odyssey with its prow pitching to and fro, On the choppy sea everyone hangs on praying to the Virgin Mary"), to "Velocity," a crowd favorite from one of the earlier recordings.

It kicked off with a simple tale of social abuse as Evora's rich alto addressed the goings-on in "Travessa de Peixeira ("In Fishwife's Alley"). And it featured attention-grabbing songs about the simple things life, the sea ("Mar de Canal"), as well as what happens in the moonlit hours on "Avenida Marginal."

Evora responds to the applause with shy smiles, still appearing overwhelmed by this New World adulation. Let's hope she's invited to reprise the Robert Mondavi Summer Festival soon, having made her debut in wine country five years ago.

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