Morna

Sodade is Portuguese for melancholy or sadness, but when the word is used to describe the emotional essence of Cape Verde's signature musical style, morna, it evokes a very particular sadness. The Cape Verde archipelago is remote, barren, rocky and subject to drought. During some five centuries of Portuguese domination, the islands served as a distribution point for West African slaves. Cape Verdeans were prized as crew on wailing ships, one of many opportunities that would steadily spirit them away from their families and homeland, so that today at least half of all Cape Verdeans no longer live on the beautiful islands their ancestors called home. Separateness, longing, scarcity and bitter memories of both man's and nature's wrath—such is the stuff of Cape Verdean sodade and of the wistful poetry at the heart of the morna repertoire.

Musically, mornas are elegant, effusive and dignified. The morna shares much in common with the Brazilian modinha and the Portuguese fado. Many musicologists trace all three genres to the African lundum, probably from Angola. What is sure is that the morna is a product of Cape Verde's complex encounter of European and African cultures. Mornas go back at least a century and a half. In the late 19th century, the genre's most revered composer, Eugénio Tavares, of the island called Brava, turned to the morna to express his own heartbreak at losing his true love to a departing ship. By the time he died with the status of a national treasure in 1930, Tavares had composed a definitive canon of mornas, clearly influenced by the fado, which he loved.

Probably the greatest Cape Verdean composer since Tavares, B. Leza, inherited the morna as a fully developed art-song form. By the time of his death in the 1980s, Leza had composed 1,700 songs, which remain bedrock repertoire for Cape Verdean singers across many genres. Virtually every Cape Verdean performer interprets the morna. It is like the blues to American popular musicians, part of the national heritage and at home in a huge variety of repertoires. That said, two contemporary singers, both from Mindelo on the island of São Vicente, tower as exponents of the morna. Cesaria Evora, the "barefoot diva," began singing mornas in small restaurants and cafes and went on to sing them in the finest concert halls of the world after her international discovery in the late 1980s. While no artist has done more to bring morna to the world, back home in Cape Verde the singer Bana looms equally large. His rich, sultry voice and legendary collaboration with the late B. Leza indelibly associate him with this most heartfelt and personal Cape Verdean song form.

Typically, the morna is performed by a single singer accompanied by a small ensemble of string instruments, often including violin or viola, nylon string guitar and the chiming, high-pitched cavaquinho, or Portuguese guitar, adding gentle syncopation. Light hand percussion, usually maracas, has long been part of morna performance practice. Today, ensembles vary widely, from electronic, keyboard-driven ensembles and bands with brass sections to the virtual orchestra Cesaria Evora has been known to stage during international tours. Whatever trends and fashions sweep through Cape Verde, the ongoing difficulty of life there virtually guarantees that the morna will preserve its status as the national song form.
—Banning Eyre (Afropop Worldwide)