Yes, she’s still with us! Gifted with amazing artistic longevity and emotional loyalty, Cesaria Evora, princess of a country that had no existence before her (in the world’s imagination at least), is releasing her tenth album: Rogamar.
Why change when there’s still gold to be mined? Cesaria is not the kind to speculate or squirrel away her gains. She is very much her own woman with all her strengths, courage, values and tenacity.

So here is the equation.
Its first term is an Atlantic archipelago: ten islands lost off the coast of Senegal on the route to the Americas; a Sahelian climate whose aridity is offset by the constant to-and-fro of the sea and the reeling sway of a music that has successfully assimilated Africa, Portugal, England, salsa, samba, quadrille, lundum and fado.
Its second term is a singer whose voice is indelibly stamped with the mark of Lusitania, with a nostalgic range and a sense of celebration, Saint John’s day dances and good-natured, terribly pagan carnivals.
Lastly come the variables…

With Cesaria, there are many of these. First, the songwriters and the extraordinary good taste she shows in choosing them. In the port of Mindelo on the island of São Vicente, they might say she has a kind of inbuilt radar that allows her to detect hazards and steer clear of treacherous reefs, enabling her to rely on the best - in this case, Manuel de Novas, ex-harbor pilot, and Teofilo Chantre, the musician from Paris, inextricably bound to the emotional lace of his native land’s saudade, Portuguese blues. Otherwise, Cesaria turns to younger talents too… “They’re born and grow. I’m the only one getting old,” she jokingly remarks. Two of these new songwriters feature on Rogamar, gifted lads from Mindelo named Constantino Cardoso and Jon Luz, so morna and coladera are not about to be sucked down into the globalization of sound…

Empress Cesaria chooses from her store of songwriting servant knights according to her paladar (palate and taste in Portuguese). “Quel flor qu’tita murchà/Quel criançà qu’tita tchorà/Quel nuvem qu’tita passà/E sodade/E tristeza… Munda ta mudà/Ma nha estoria ta f’cà”… Um Pincelada by Teofilo Chantre and Vitorino Chantre, pure poetry that we will translate (though we don’t necessarily need to, since the phrasing is so enchanting): “This flower that wilts, this child that cries, this cloud that passes, it’s nostalgia, it’s sadness… The world changes, but my story continues”. So how should this be sung? Mournfully? Not at all! Cesaria makes it swing, period. Rogamar blows hot on cold, cold on hot.

Another variable in the Cesaria equation is her musicians. Rogamar calls on all the talent of Fernando Andrade, aka Nando, Cesaria’s pianist since 1999, who brings a cheerful tropical melancholy to the album’s production. Then six of the fifteen tracks feature Jaques Morelenbaum, an extraordinary Brazilian cellist, arranger and sound sculptor, alongside Caetano Veloso, Mariza and Ryuchi Sakamoto.

Guitars, piano, violins (intact, direct, candid street violins) and singular beats… Thousands of unknowns lie behind the obvious similarities (Cesaria’s personal world). Since Cesaria now has a studio in Mindelo, she has been able to work with local musicians. The batucada, or São Vicente island percussion ensemble, has a very special drum beat, reproduced here. The same goes for the drums of Saint John’s Day (the summer solstice, celebrated with great pomp on the 24th June), subtle and out of step on Rogamar.

Rogamar: from rogar, to pray, and mar, the sea, the ever-present sea…”The people of the islands/Are a seagoing people/But only for long voyages,” writes Teofilo Chantre over a Saint John’s Day beat. The journey through the “channel” between São Vicente Island and Sant’Anton opposite is quite an ordeal. When the waves rise, “Rogà, rogà Virgem Maria/Pegà, pegà Santa Barba,” - on the little boat, they pray to the Virgin Mary and ask Santa Barba to hold on. Cesaria loves to gaze at the sea. She’s very clear: she cannot live without it. But as for going in: never! She’s afraid of it, she says… just as she says she has loved, suffered and been exploited by the colonial system and jealous producers, yet managed to laugh and joke about it. “And God never sleeps, he writes in a straight line, even injustices,” Cesaria adds, with a meaningful look.

Cesaria Evora sings in Portuguese Creole. She has pursued her career with France as her advance base, since her producer, José Da Silva, lives there, but she is also profoundly African. So Rogamar uses music by Ray Lema to offer a reminder of the colonial history of Africa: São Tomé Na Equador, another island under Portuguese control, a bastion of forced labor, as previously described in Sodade. It’s not so far from Avenida Marginal, the road running along the shore of Mindelo Bay, to Senegal. Ismaël Lô, the voice of Senegalese folk, made that trip for a Pan-African anthem, Africa Nossa - our Africa, “cradle of the world, fertile continent”. Madagascar’s Régis Gizavo also came along with his accordion…

So to sum up, Cesaria Evora is an equation with several unknowns. Since secrets remain a mystery, she has sold nearly five million albums worldwide, although the future once predicted for her was an ephemeral season in the sun. Since 1988, the year of La Diva aux Pieds Nus (The Barefoot Diva) and her appearance in the Western market, “I’ve fulfilled all my obligations,” she says… Thoroughly, we might add, and remaining very much the mistress of her own fate.

Rogamar is fresh. Rogamar is oceanic. Cesaria is complete.