Legendary Cape Verdean Singer Cesaria Evora Dead At Age 70

Legendary Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora passed away yesterday at age 70 after being ill for the past three months. Evora, nicknamed “the barefoot diva” had been singing since age 20 in her native Cape Verde. In September, Evora officially gave up on her music career due to her illness. Read more about her life after the jump.

Legendary Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora, nicknamed the “barefoot diva”, died Saturday in a hospital at the age of 70, three months after retiring due to ill health.

The singing star, who won international acclaim with her sultry voice and melancholy ballads of lost love, died on her native island of Sao Vicente, Cape Verde Culture Minister Mario Lucio Sousa announced.

In September, her record label Lusafrica said Evora had decided to end her career due to health problems. She underwent open heart surgery in May 2010.

“I have no strength, no energy. I want you to say to my fans: forgive me, but now I need to rest,” Evora told French newspaper Le Monde at the time.

“I infinitely regret having to stop because of illness, I would have wanted to give more pleasure to those who have followed me for so long,” she said.

Evora has sung the blues-influenced “saudade” of her native Cape Verde since her 20s, but came to world fame late in life in 1992 after decades singing in the bars of Mindello, on Sao Vicente.

Her third album Miss Perfumado, which came out that year, was a worldwide hit with more than 300,000 copies sold to date. In all she has produced 10 studio albums and an anthology of historic radio recordings while touring far from her Atlantic island home.

In 2008 she suffered a stroke after a concert in the Australian city of Melbourne and returned to her Paris base to recover, but still managed to record her latest album Nha Sentimento for release in 2009.

Her international career began in 1988 when, at 47 and after three decades of singing in bars in her remote, windswept African homeland, a young Frenchman invited her to Paris to record an album.

“La diva aux pieds nus” (The Barefoot Diva), who often performed without shoes, was an immediate hit with the Cape Verdean exile community.

Four years and two albums later that she became a breakthrough success, selling out shows to Cape Verdean and French audiences alike.

Her voice was compared to that of US great Billie Holliday, and the music press revelled in exotic tales of her African island life, growing up in poverty and acquiring a taste for cognac, smoking and wild nights out.

In 2004, her album Voz d’Amor won a Grammy Award in the United States as “Best World Music Album” and stars like Madonna, David Byrne and Brandford Marsalis descended on her New York concert.

Evora’s late-blooming success took her on a punishing global schedule at an advanced age. She gave up alcohol in 1994, but not smoking, and by 2005 she was diagnosed with heart problems and begun a series of operations.

In February 2010, President Nicolas Sarkozy decorated her with the Legion of Honour, France’s highest award.
AFP