Home-brewed World Music

International stars Cesaria Evora and Carlinhos Brown stay true to their roots

Since her first album, La Diva aux Pieds Nus (The Barefoot Diva), Grammy-nominated Cape Verdean singer Cesaria Evora (6/9, Masonic Center) has sold over five million albums worldwide. Carlinhos Brown (6/23, Masonic Center, with Ojos de Brujo) is one of his native Brazil’s best-known performers, renowned as a songwriter, percussionist, dancer, and humanitarian. Yet, for all their international fame, this pair of artists retains deep ties to the distinct musical cultures that inspired them.

The title of Cesaria Evora’s tenth album, Rogamar, nicely illustrates the point. The title, which translates roughly as “Sea Prayer,” evokes the island nation of Cape Verde’s interdependent relationship with the ocean. Evora’s music, known as the morna, bears a maritime stamp as well: African rhythms, Brazilian modhinas, and the mournful Portuguese fado are filtered through the swaying tranquility of island life. Though her recordings have launched her to international acclaim, Evora’s work retains a decidedly local flavor: Much of the new album was recorded in her hometown of Mindelo and the songs were written by Cape Verde’s finest songwriters.

Read more about Evora in the San Francisco Chronicle and San Jose Mercury News.

Carlinhos Brown took his surname from “The Godfather of Soul,” James Brown. And while his music is incessantly funky, his rhythmic flair comes as much from his home city, Salvador de Bahia, as his passion for American R&B. Even among audiences outside Brazil, Bahian music has gained cache for its effervescent, hard-charging rhythms, and social awareness. Brown captures that spirit, joining it to his love for rock, reggae, and funk, to create a worldly music enlivened by Bahia’s profound musical influence.

Ojos de Brujo comes from Spain’s famously independent Catalonian state and has created an equally free and ferocious musical amalgam that starts with flamenco, but also embraces hip-hop, funk, and electronica—a musical mashup it calls Jip Jop Flamenkillo. Hot on the heels of a new release, Techarí, the Barcelona-based collective continues to make the global local with their “celebration of identity in the modern world, embracing youth and possibility, individuality and responsibility, using one of the freshest and most openly polyglot musical idioms yet to be invented on planet Earth” (All About Jazz).