Regardless where you’re from, even when you couldn’t understand her Verdean patois, but felt instead the pathos of her voice, Cesaria Evora belonged to you. Her death this past weekend from physical ailments due to smoking and excessive drinking was not a shock for people who knew her. She ended her concert career just three months prior to her death, hospitalized in Cape Verde — an island archipelago she made famous through her music.
There’s a resonance in my connection with her — a similarity. We come from somewhat the same backgrounds though in different countries, under different circumstances and in different environments in which to flourish. Her mother was a cook and her father a musician. My parents were both cooks and musicians as well — mama sang and dad played slide guitar and violin. She was a late bloomer, and so was I. We both grew up poor, though the isolation of a new American immigrant’s child in America is far different from the people of the Cape Verde islands off the western coast of Africa. Hopes and expectations can rise, no matter who you are, if in the right place at the right time, and eventually Cesaria’s hopes and dreams rose through her music.