International Affairs

ISLAND GIRL Cape Verdean singer Mayra Andrade's debut album has global ambitions

Photograph: J.M. Lubrano

It would seem that Las Vegas has little in common with the West African islands grouped under the title Cape Verde—unless you count that, owing to its remoteness in the North Atlantic, what happens in Cape Verde also tends to stay there. Musicians with global ambitions probably feel this more profoundly than their compatriots, especially when journalists ask the inevitable question about the influence of Cesária Évora, the singer whose worldwide reach has made her the one thing nonnatives can tell you with any certainty about Cape Verde. Thus, young songstress Mayra Andrade (pronounced “MY-ruh an-DRAH-jee”), the newest name in a suddenly crowded field of traveling Cape Verdean performers, states her reverence for Évora in proud, nationalistic terms. “You know, Amílcar Cabral is the father of our country’s independence, its spirit,” she says in Portuguese-inflected English. “But after him, nobody put our country on the map like Cesária. You have no idea—it goes so much further than music.”

Surprisingly, Andrade’s music isn’t as heavily indebted to Évora’s as that admiration suggests. When Navega, Andrade’s debut album, was released last year in the U.K., its liveliness brought her into the ranks of the female Cape Verdeans (among them Lura and Lisbon-bred Sara Tavares) who could be called post-Cesária. At 23, Andrade is the youngest, but her vision may be the most supple and cohesive—for a couple of reasons. The child of a career diplomat, Andrade was born in Cuba and grew up in enough foreign locales (Germany, Senegal, Angola) to have absorbed much beyond the island of her heritage. Then in 2001, a music scholarship brought her to her current home base of Paris, whose influence explains her French-language song, “Comment s’il en pleuvait,” and is alluded to when Andrade uses the word métissage (“cultural mixing”) to describe her current modus operandi. “Cesária and other Cape Verdean groups were definitely high on my parents’ playlist no matter where we were,” she says. “But when you’re a kid you listen to pop from all over. Now I just mix musics instinctively.”

And yet, Andrade’s work is also the product of cultural diversity within Cape Verde. Her family is originally from Santiago, the densely populated island in the country’s south; by contrast, Évora and the melancholic pastoral style she popularized, morna, have roots on the northern island of São Vicente. Bittersweet memories also haunt many of the subjects in Andrade’s repertoire, but the danceable rhythms called batuque and funaná give her music an energy that statesiders may associate with another Lusophone culture. “Is she Brazilian?” Rio-based songwriter-producer Arto Lindsay recently asked me, upon hearing “Dimokransa,” Navega’s politically tinged opener. “She sounds African to me, but actually, she has the Portuguese equivalent of a mid-Atlantic accent.” Andrade is matter-of-fact about where the sounds of Brazil and Cape Verde intertwine. “There are four types of funaná,” she explains. “ ‘Dimokransa’ uses the one we call funaná sambado, because the rhythm blends with samba. It’s Brazilian, but not really.”

Oddly, Andrade has no real answer for why it took her so long to get started on her debut. Her bandleading skills had won her positive notices for years before she recorded the disc, almost from the moment she took top honors at an international music festival in Canada when she was 16. “It just wasn’t the right time,” she says, though in the meantime she was tapped to work alongside stars as disparate as chansonnier Charles Aznavour and Brazilians Chico Buarque and Lenine. Examples of Andrade’s innovative ideas radiate through Navega, from the Farfisa organ that kicks both “Tunuca” and “Lua” into windswept overdrive, to the accordion and palmas (flamenco-style hand claps) on the folksy “Regasu.” Some of her characters dream big—just as her music indicates she does. But it’s a telling tribute to her connection to Cape Verde that the male narrator of “Poc Li Dente é Tcheu,” whose “solution is certainly not to emigrate,” is backed by traditional music that stands tall beside her fusions. “I already have all the documents I need,” he states in the lyrics. “My hoe, my hammer and my two arms.”

Mayra Andrade plays Joe’s Pub Wed 2; Navega will be domestically released by Stern’s Music Sept 2.