Carmen Souza combines English sea shanties with Cape Verdean rhythms

When she was a small child and taking a long time to get ready for school, family gatherings or singing in the church choir, Cape Verdean singer Carmen Souza was often called “ariope”.

What he didn’t realize until years later was that the Creole word came from the English word “hurry up”.

“We have a lot of words that come from British English,” Souza, a jazz musician and instrumentalist, told the BBC.

“‘Salong’ is ‘very long’, ‘fulespide’ is ‘full speed’, ‘streioei’ is ‘straightaway’, ‘bot’ is ‘boat’, and ‘ariope’ – which I always remember my father telling me when he wanted to I’ll start walking.”

Ariope is now one of the eight songs Souza has created for the album Port’Inglês – meaning English port – to explore the unknown history of the 120-year British presence in Cape Verde. It started as research for a master’s degree.

“The people of Cape Verde are very connected to music – in fact, we always say that music is what we export – so I wonder if there is still music,” he says.

There are only a few records of the music from that time – Souza discovered that the American psychic, Helen Heffron Roberts, had recorded some in the 1930s but it is on very fragile cylinders and he could listen to it in person at Yale University in the US. .

So instead of rehashing old recordings, Souza – and fellow singer Theo Pas’cal – created new music, inspired by the stories they’ve experienced.

He has combined English jazz and maritime shanties with Cape Verdean music – including the funaná, played with a metal stick and knife and accordion, and the batuque, played by women and inspired by African music.

The Cape Verde Islands are located about 500 kilometers off the coast of West Africa. They are generally dry, with little cultivated land and prone to drought.

But it is the best place in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, and it began to be controlled by the Portuguese when they traded between Southeast Asia, Europe and America – in spices, silk and slaves. With the abolition of the slave trade, Cape Verde declined.

Cape Verde remained a Portuguese colony until 1975 – but in the 18th and 19th centuries, British traders settled and Cape Verde once again became a transit point.

The British came for cheap labor, goats, donkeys, salt, turtles, amber and archil, a special ink used to make British clothes.

They built roads, bridges and created natural harbors – which became known as Port’Inglês – and established coal mines, with coal imported from Wales.

Mindelo’s port of São Vicente became a refueling stop for ships carrying goods across the Atlantic or to Africa – and an important international communication point when in 1875 it reached the stop of the submarine cable.

Souza’s investigation of the British presence in Cape Verde quickly became private.

“When I started researching, I found a lot of connections,” Souza says – including that his grandfather carried coal on Mindelo’s trains.

This inspired him to write Ariope – the story of an old man encouraging a young man, who likes to sit in the shade playing the guitar to “ariope”. The British trains are coming and the sailors don’t like to wait – “fulespide, streioei”, the song goes.

Souza imagines the spirit of his grandfather in this song. He loved to play the fiddle – and was known as a great storyteller.

“I was told that if you walked with him for miles, you wouldn’t be able to see the distance because it would be a funny story.”

Souza is part of the larger Cape Verdean diaspora. He was born in Portugal, and now lives in London. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), there are approximately 700,000 Cape Verdeans living abroad – twice as many as at home.

Historically, people were forced to go to work because of hunger, drought, poverty and lack of opportunity.

The movement contributed to the deep, rich islands of the most popular music, including the melancholic songs that became famous with the singer Cesária Évora and was declared an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2019.

The composer of many of the songs that made Évora an international star was Francisco Beleza – also known as B Léza. He changed the morna and was one of the most famous Cape Verdean writers, composers and morna singers.

According to Souza’s research, he also saw the British presence as more beneficial than the Portuguese – especially for the Cape Verdean middle class.

Souza Amizadi’s song, a mix of funaná and jazz, was inspired by B Léza’s interest in Britain. He wrote morna – Hitler ca ta ganha guerra, ni nada, which means “Hitler will not win the war” to show solidarity with the British people during World War II – and raised money for the British war effort.

Souza found the ports to be “important places for musicians” who flocked there to learn the music – and instruments – of foreign sailors.

He combined it with Cape Verdean music to create a new sound. Mazurka – derived from the Polish folk dance – and contradança from the British quadrille dance.

Early written records of Cape Verdean music are rare – the Portuguese colonists did not record life and people in Cape Verde except for tax records and artifacts.

He also banned the event – for being too loud and too African – and funaná because his words protested the difference between people.

But Souza found an interesting note in the writings of the British naturalist Charles Darwin, who arrived in Cape Verde in 1832 – the first stop on his famous Beagle expedition to study species.

He describes meeting a group of about 20 young women who, writes Darwin, “sang loudly an insulting song, beating their hands on their legs”.

This, says Souza, is probably the first batuque song – and inspired him to write Sant Jago’s song about Darwin’s hospitality in Cape Verde.

Many young Cape Verdean musicians prefer not to play the island’s old music, and some like contradança are slowly dying out.

Souza hopes that his Port’Inglês album will inspire younger generations that “there is a way to do something new with traditional colors”.

“I always bring in different elements – improvisation, piano, flute, jazz connection – so that the song goes through another creative process.”

Port’Inglês by Carmen Souza is released via Galileo MC