Lura - 6 - LIVE at Afrikafestival Hertme 2008

Performance - 5 July 2008 The country's name is cape verde and the young woman is lura. She sings of this former portuguese territory, a string of ten islands, ten volcanic pebbles scattered in the ocean off senegal. Connoisseurs of diva cesaria evora are familiar with the little archipelago, insignificant in terms of global strategy, but possessed of a native wisdom that could teach more powerful nations a great deal. Invented by european colonists, tilled by transported africans and seared by drought, cape verde has managed to heal the wounds inflicted by a history of famine and become a hospitable, peaceful, proud country. Lura sings of this land, where she was not born... Lura is as young as the country of her roots. Cape Verde split away from Portugal in 1975, the year she was born in Lisbon. Portugal's capital is home to most of the Cape Verdean diaspora, although large communities are also to be found in Senegal, the north-east United States, Holland, France and Italy. Two-thirds of Cape Verdeans live outside their country and the same is true of their artists. In Lisbon, the Cape Verdean population is mainly concentrated in the suburb of Benfica, in a makeshift district of narrow streets and jerry-built houses. However, the Portuguese-African "centre" of Lisbon is Rua Poço de Negros (Well of the Blacks Street), a long thoroughfare that runs from the historical quarter of Bairro Alto to the Parliament district, and holds many African restaurants, shops and nightclubs. Lura's father was from Santiago, the largest, greenest, most African island of Cape Verde, and her mother from São Nicolau, the island that produces the best grog (Cape Verdean rum). "There was nothing artistic about my family, my parents mainly listened to morna," muses Lura, recalling her early youth with an allusion to the velvet, slightly mocking saudade that, lethargically intoned by Cesaria Evora, has made Cape Verde famous all over the world. "She has opened the way. Now we can present other Cape Verdean styles," explains Lura. Her body sculpted by swimming, dancing and simply the desire to be beautiful, the artist performs two or three of Cape Verde's main genres.