This song about the little country that she loved so much is the one that I will associate most with Cesaria Evora, the Cabo Verdean “barefoot diva,” who has died, aged 70.

She was a regular visitor to Toronto over the past 20 years, as she collected hundreds of thousands of fans of every musical persuasion around the world with her art, morna — the Portuguese-language blues of her island home.

Evora was the opposite of everything that the pop world is all about: Although she started singing in local bars at age 15, she didn’t make an album until she as in her mid-40s, and avoided anything that wasn’t strictly about making the kind of music she cared about.

Thanks to a lifetime of smoking and drinking, Evora’s vocal chords often sounded as if they were carrying all of the world’s woes in each note.

Evora had been in inceasingly fragile health since a stroke in 2008. She cancelled her last attempt at a tour in September.

Garth Cartwright has written a nice, informative obituary in the Guardian.

Here is another of Evora’s favourites, “Sodade,” from a 2004 live performance in Paris:

http://youtu.be/dNVrdYGiULM

• Author
• Recent Posts

John Terauds

John Terauds, Editor-Emeritus of Ludwig van Toronto, is currently a Divinity student at the University of Toronto and a church music director. He joined the Toronto Star in 1988, was the classical music critic from 2005 to 2012, and continues as a freelance critic for the paper. He is the co-author of Roy Thomson Hall: A Portrait, a book written with Toronto Star Colleague, William Littler.

Latest posts by John Terauds (see all)

• Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
• Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
• CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019