Following the extraordinary discovery of radio recordings thought to have been lost forever, Cesaria Evora’s new album Radio Mindelo has just been released. These twenty two tracks were recorded in the 1960s, when Cesaria was just 20 years old and her voice carried a youthful insouciance.

In 1988, when Cesaria Evora was ‘discovered’ by music fans in Europe, a legend was born in front of our very eyes - this 50 year old woman seemed to have come out of nowhere. At the time, all we knew was that she had performed in a few bars in Paris for her friends and the regulars, and that she sang with incredible power and emotion. We knew she came from an archipelago which few had ever heard of, a few forgotten islands off the coast of Senegal. Fastforward a few years and the ‘Barefoot Diva’ had sold around 6 million records, putting ‘morna’ firmly on the map. Today Cesaria is a global ambassador for Cape Verde and she has opened the door to international careers for several other Cape Verdean artists such as Mayra Andrade, Lura and Tcheka.

The way her career developed outside Cape Verde, it seemed as though this artist appeared overnight: but Cesaria Evora was singing since she was 14 years old. Until now there were no recordings to document this fabulous history, which also mirrors Cape Verdean history, from Portuguese colony to independence. Now these recordings have miraculously come to light, we have a chance to discover it for ourselves. Made between 1959 and 1961, these 22 tracks were recorded when Cesaria Evora was in her early twenties, they originate from two commerical radio stations – Barlavento and Clube. As Véronique Mortaigne writes in Le Monde, ‘her voice is clear and refined, with the same intonation, clarity and phrasing she has today’. The discovery of these recordings is a fabulous Christmas present for all of us music fans. The Diva of Morna continues to astonish us, and there’s more to come - she is preparing a new album for release in spring 2009.

(Translation by Jody Gillett)