Catalogue: Africa: "Cabo Verde En Serenata" - Simentera

A fresh and resolute breeze is blowing from Cabo Verde, the archipelago off the West Coast of Africa. Digging deep down to their own roots, Simentera present a music of incomparable soul stirring depth and rhythmic verve. The delicacy of the acoustic instrumentation, airy voices and the outward-looking song writing revitalize Cape Verde's mornas, coladera and funanás to quote only a few of the islands' musical expressions. However, Simentera have carefully kept the melodic poetry and the languorous rhythms so typical of Cabo Verde, once sad like all the sadnesses of this world and as happy as the radiant sun, full of love and suffering, and naturally of "sodade", that bitter-sweet mixture of memory and hope. With their album Cabo Verde en Serenata the group have given birth to a music which lends a voice to the earth, the sea and the wind, a music which evokes the mysterious light that spreads across the sky when the rains finally come, a grace that simply delights all over again.

Press Quotes

"Simentera have been instrumental in rediscovering the country's musical history. They cultivate the traditional forms, playing only acoustic instruments and presenting polyphonic compositions."
Gateway Of Africa

"Simentera's morna songs are "suffers' music" in the Jamaican sense - and they convey the same sense of beauty and longing. Sys band leader Mario Lucio Sousa: "We are melancholic, but it is a happy melancholy. We sing with our souls, but our singing is not sad. If it invites you to cry, then it means crying for beauty."
Ljudmilla