Carmen Souza combines English seaside shacks with Cape Verdean rhythms

Cape Verdean musician Carmen Souza was often called “ariepo” when she was a young child and took too long to get ready for school, family gatherings or singing in the church choir.

What she didn’t realize until years later was that the Creole word comes directly from the English word “hurry.”

“We have so many words that come from British English,” Souza, a jazz singer-songwriter and instrumentalist, tells the BBC.

“Salong” is “so long”, “fullspeed” is “full speed”, “streyoey” is “at once”, “bot” is “boat” and “oriope”, I always remember my father telling me , when he wanted me to pick up the pace.”

Ariope is now one of eight songs Souza has written for the album Port’Inglês – meaning English Port – to explore the little-known history of the 120-year British presence in Cape Verde. It began as research for her master’s degree.

“Cape Verdean people are very connected to music – in fact, we always say that music is our biggest export – so I wondered if there was a musical influence as well,” she says.

There are very few recordings of the compositions from the time – Souza discovered that the American ethnomusicologist Helen Heffron Roberts recorded some in the 1930s, but they are on very fragile wax cylinders and can only be heard in person at Yale University in the US. .

So instead of rearranging old records, Souza – and her musical partner Theo Pascal – created new music inspired by the stories she encountered.

She combined jazz and English sea shanties with Cape Verdean rhythms – including funaná, played on an iron rod with a knife and accordion, and batuque, played by women and based on African drum rhythms.

The Cape Verde Islands lie approximately 500 km (310 mi) off the coast of West Africa. They are mostly arid, with limited arable land and prone to drought.

But they are a strategic waypoint on the Atlantic Ocean and were first controlled by the Portuguese as they traded between Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas for spices, silk and enslaved people. With the abolition of the slave trade, Cape Verde fell into decline.

Cape Verde remained a Portuguese colony until 1975, but British merchants settled in the 18th and 19th centuries and Cape Verde once again became a busy crossroads.

The British came for cheap labor, goats, donkeys, salt, tortoises, amber, and archila, a special ink used in British clothing.

They built roads, bridges and developed natural harbors – which became known as Port’Ingles – and established coaling stations, bringing coal from Wales.

The port of Mindelo in São Vicente became a vital refueling point for steamships carrying goods across the Atlantic Ocean or to Africa and an important global communications center with the arrival in 1875. underwater cable station.

Souza’s investigation of the British presence in Cape Verde quickly became personal.

“When I started researching, I discovered so many personal connections,” Souza says, including the fact that her grandfather loaded coal on a ship in Mindelo.

This inspired her to write Oriopa, a story about an elderly man who calls a young man who prefers to stay in the shadows and plays the guitar, “ariopa”. The British ships are coming, and the sailors don’t like to wait – “full speed, streoey”, – goes the song.

Souza represents the spirit of his grandfather in the song. He played the violin – and was known as a great storyteller.

“I was told that if you had to walk with him for miles, you wouldn’t notice the distance because it would be one funny story after another.”

Susa is part of the large Cape Verdean diaspora. She was born in Portugal, now lives in London. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), there are about 700,000 Cape Verdeans living abroad – twice as many as at home.

Historically, people have been forced to move for work due to hunger, drought, poverty and lack of opportunity.

This movement fostered a deep, rich tradition of highly distinctive music in the islands, including the melancholic morna, made famous by singer Cesaria Evora and declared a UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2019.

The composer of many of the songs that made Evora a world star was Francisco Beleza – also known as B. Blades. He revolutionized Morno and was one of the most influential writers, composers and singers in Cape Verde.

According to Souza’s research, he also considered the British presence more beneficial than the Portuguese – at least for middle-class Cape Verdeans.

Souza’s track Amizadi, a mix of fanana and jazz, was inspired by B Léza’s admiration for the British. He composed morna – Hitler ca ta ganha guerra, ni nada, meaning “Hitler won’t win the war” to show solidarity with the British people during World War II – and even raised money for the British war effort.

Souza found that the ports were “an important center for musicians” who flocked there to learn the music – and the instruments – of visiting foreign sailors.

They mixed them with Cape Verdean rhythms to create new sounds. Mazurka comes from a Polish musical form, and contradance comes from the British quadrille dance.

Early written records of Cape Verdean music are scarce—Portuguese colonists did not document Cape Verdean life and society beyond records of taxes and goods.

They also banned batuque – for being too loud and too African – and funaná because its lyrics challenged social inequality.

But Souza found an intriguing entry in the diary of British naturalist Charles Darwin, who arrived in Cape Verde in 1832 – the first stop on his famous Beagle voyage to explore the living world.

He describes meeting a group of about 20 young women who, Darwin writes, “sang a wild song with great energy, beating their hands against their feet.”

Souza says it’s likely an early rendition of the batuk – and was inspired to write Sant Jago by Darwin’s account of the warm hospitality he received in Cape Verde.

Many young musicians from Cape Verde tend not to play the old rhythms of the islands, and some, such as contradanza, are gradually dying out.

Souza hopes her album Port’Inglês will inspire younger generations that “there is a way to do something new with traditional genres.”

“I always bring different elements—improvisation, piano, flute, jazz harmonization—to make the music go through another process of creolization.”

Port’Inglês by Carmen Souza is released via Galileo MC