Cesária Évora

Cesária Évora was born on 27 August 1941 in Mindelo, on the island of São Vicente in what was then Portuguese Cape Verde. She was one of seven children of Justino da Cruz Évora, a musician who played the violin, and Joana Évora, a cook and domestic worker. Her father died when Cesária was a young child, and the family's poverty deepened; she received little schooling, and at around the age of ten she was placed in an orphanage when her mother could no longer care for all her children.

She began singing in the bars and taverns of Mindelo as a teenager, giving voice to the morna — the slow, melancholic song-form of the islands, sung in Cape Verdean Creole and steeped in longing, love, and the ache of separation known as sodade. For decades she sang in near-obscurity, and after a period of retirement in the 1970s she had all but withdrawn from performance.

Her fortunes turned in the late 1980s, when she traveled to Lisbon and then Paris and recorded the albums that carried her voice to the world. "Miss Perfumado" (1992) brought her international acclaim, and she toured barefoot in solidarity with the poor women of her homeland, earning the name the Barefoot Diva. In 2004 her album "Voz d'Amor" won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary World Music Album, crowning a career of many nominations.

Cesária Évora died on 17 December 2011 in Mindelo, the city that made her. She had carried the song of a small island nation to concert halls across the earth, and in her unhurried, unadorned voice the whole memory of Cape Verde still sings.