Kavita Shah - Cape Verdean Blues [CD]

Award-winning jazz vocalist and composer Kavita Shah's latest album, Cape Verdean Blues, is the culmination of a diasporic quest for a spiritual home. The carefully curated album of traditional Cape Verdean music is also a tribute to the charismatic and unapologetically individual artist Cesária Évora, and a love letter to her breathtaking archipelago and it's welcoming people. Shah is a lifelong New Yorker of Indian origin hailed for possessing an "amazing dexterity for musical languages" (NPR), and she speaks 9 languages-including fluent Portuguese and Cape Verdean Kriolu. At the heart of the 12-song album is "sodade," the melancholy sense of transience that permeates Cape Verde and it's free-spirited island population. On Cape Verdean Blues, Shah's in-depth collaboration with master guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Bau (Cesária's former musical director) and her bold self-possession have enabled her to achieve a rare feat: creating a world music album that feels like home.