Cesária Évora (port. Cesária Évora; nicknamed "the barefoot diva"; August 27, 1941, Mindelo, Cape Verde - December 17, 2011, Mindelo, Cape Verde) was a Cape Verdean singer of morna, fado and modinha. She sang in Cape Verdian Creole. The acoustic framing of the voice was the piano, Hawaiian guitar, accordion, violins and clarinet.
The singer always performed barefoot - a symbolic tribute to the poverty in which her fellow countrymen lived (and almost half of them continue to live) in Cape Verde. The singer went barefoot in life as well, for many years. She only wore sandals when traveling in temperate countries.
Cesaria Evora was born on August 27, 1941 in Mindelo to musician Justino da Cruz Evora and cook Dona Joana. In 1948, her father died, and to somehow alleviate her plight, her mother put Cesaria in an orphanage. When she grew up, Cesaria returned home and began to help her mother. Since 1958, that is, from the age of 17, Cesaria Evora worked in music bars in Mindelo. She initially performed songs in the style of morna (port. morna), a genre traditional to Cape Verde, as well as fado (port. fado), African songs and coladera.
The singer recorded her first solo album at the age of 43 in Lisbon. Evora's first producer was another famous singer, the caboverdean Tito Paris. It was there in Lisbon, at the Enclave restaurant (where the Lisbon Caboverdians club met), that she was heard by José da Silva, a Frenchman with Caboverdian roots, and was so captivated by her voice that he devoted three years to making her famous. He brought the already 47-year-old singer to France. From that moment, her collaboration with Lusafrica began.
In the early 1980s, Cesaria Evora started a tour in Europe. And already in 1988 she became world famous. The singer received special recognition after the release of her fourth album "Miss Perfumado" in 1992. The 1995 album "Cesária" brought her international success and her first nomination for a Grammy Award.
The singer's first performance in Russia took place in April 2002 at the Anatoly Vasilyev Theater on Sretenka Street. This concert was closed to the general public and the visit was not officially announced. The second concert took place in May of the same year at the Maly Theater.
In 2004, at the request of Italian singer Adriano Celentano, she took part in the recording of his album "C'è sempre un motivo", performing together with him a remake of the famous composition "Il ragazzo della via Gluck".
In 2005 she performed for the first time in Siberia - in Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk, returning to these cities in 2007. Since 2005 she has toured practically the whole Russia with concerts, performed in Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Ufa, Chelyabinsk, Tyumen, Perm, Yaroslavl and many other cities.
While on tour in Australia in 2008, Evora suffered a stroke. In 2009 she released her latest album "Nha Sentimento", recorded in Mindelo and Paris. In 2009, Cesaria Evora became a Knight of the Legion of Honor, receiving the award from the hands of French Minister of Culture and Communications Christine Albanel, becoming the first Cape Verdean to receive the honor. In 2010, Evora performed a series of concerts, the last of which was in Lisbon on May 8. On May 10 of the same year, she suffered a heart attack and underwent open-heart surgery in Paris. Due to health problems, the singer had to cancel all her concert performances for the rest of the year.
In 2011, she returned to touring, performing concerts in Perm, Nizhny Novgorod, Moscow, and Arkhangelsk in April. On April 5, at a press conference in Nizhny Novgorod, she refused to sing due to the unaccustomed cold. In September 2011, Evora announced the end of her singing career.
On December 17, 2011, Cesaria Evora died in Cape Verde at the age of 70. The causes of death were cardiopulmonary failure and arterial hypertension. Cape Verde declared three days of national mourning for her death.