QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM TRANSYLVANIA
Born in 1941 in the village of Mindelo, on the Cape Verdian island of Sao Vicente, the future did not look bright for Cesaria Evora. She had a impoverished chuildhood that was “neither happy nor unhappy”, but she became a music asset for her closely-knit community as an adult. Her mournful warble, combined with a gentle, cigarette-induced huskiness fascinated locals for decades, long before she was catapulted to international fame in the early 1990s.
The singer became the biggest representative of her tiny and little-known African archipelago nation. A queen who never abandoned her subjects. She continued to live at the place where she grew until her death, and never forsook her associates of yore, marginalised Cape Verdians of all sorts (backstreet musicians, past lovers, old friends, fans, prostitutes, and her faithful cook Piroc). It’s amongst those people that she felt most comfortable.
Cesaria Evora lived 11 years in complete isolation during her youth, without singing or even having contact with her community. A real hermit. She refused to go into the streets when her nation finally obtained independence from Portugal in 1975. These unusual mental health patterns persisted throughout her life. She drank heavily and was a chain smoker with little regard for the physical health.Her granddaughter suspects that she was bipolar. She stopped taking the various medications that kept her alive and did “precisely the opposite of what the doctors told her” upon being told she could no longer sing in 2011. That was after her last public performance in Antalya in July 2011. The woman defined by music had been silenced by her ailing health. She decided to die, and she would achieve her object within just a few months, in December of the same year.
Portuguese documentarist Ana Sofia Fonseca blends extensive archive footage from the final three decades of Cesaria’s life with statements from her surviving granddaughter, a few friends and musicians. There are no traditional talking heads interviews, making the film a little more informal than your average music doc. Some interesting highlights include the rendition of the song Sodade combined with images of Cape Verdians being sent to work in the neighbouring country of Sao Tome and Principe, in conditions analogue to slavery. The song title is the most emblematic word of the Portuguese language, referring to the longing that people experience when they are away from those who they love. A trip to Cuba in order to record with Compay Segundo also provides viewers with both comic relief and emotional healing.
The European and the American media repeatedly compared Cesaria to Edith Piaf, however she saw herself as more akin to Angela Maria, the Brazilian “Queen of the Radio”. Strangely, the film fails to explore Cesaria’s connection to the largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world. It mentions her tours in countless Europeans and Northern American cities, but there is not a single mention of Brazil. Cesaria performs with Brazilian singers Seu Jorge and Marisa Monte. Again, no mention of their nationality. She sings Brazilian classics E Doce Morrer no Mar e Se Acaso Voce Chegasse. The movie’s closing song is Carnaval de Sao Vicente, in which Cesaria describes her home island a “little Brazil with of life and full of colour”. It is peculiar that the director failed to acknowledge such a significant cross-Atlantic connection.
The nuances of Cape Verdian creole, and its connection to other Lusophone nations is also strangely absent. Cape Verdian is the oldest creole language in the world, and its fascinating musicality, combined with barely intelligible lyrics, fascinates Portuguese speakers everywhere on the planet. Still, this a fitting tribute to a woman who became bigger than her home nation.
Cesaria Evora showed at the 22nd Transylvania International Film Festival. DMovies is in lovo at the event unearthing the dirtiest gems exclusively for you.