Global Voices » Cape Verde

Online Highlights from the Portuguese-Speaking World in 2011

Maisie Fitzpatrick — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 02:11:32 +0000

2011 has been another year in which bloggers and activists from a number of Portuguese-speaking countries have come together to report, translate and promote blogs and citizen media from all over the world. This article selects the highlights in the coverage of Lusophone countries on Global Voices over the last year.

Portuguese language and culture

In February we covered several blogs that gave voice to their love of the Portuguese language, paying tribute to the great variety of dialects spoken by more than 200 million people worldwide.

Hau nia lian, hau nia rain (My language, my country). Photo by Sapo Noticias Timor Leste (public domain)

In May the newspaper @Verdade, our partner in Mozambique, described Portuguese as a language that is bound up in what it means to be Mozambican.

In its coverage of Timor Leste, Global Voices examined the role of languages in asserting the identity of a country which has 16 national languages and dozens of dialects. Some blogs on Cape Verde also suggested that there are “distinct social functions” for both the language spoken by the people, Crioulo, and the official language, Portuguese.

Online demonstrations brought a more political dimension to bear on this issue, with heated reactions to the proposal for Equatorial Guinea to become a member of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries, despite having a poor track record on human rights.

Brazil: Paths towards Development

In spite of the current global crisis, Brazil is experiencing a period of economic optimism fuelled by domestic consumption. In order to maintain this growth, ongoing development policy in the country has been putting pressure on the environment and human rights.

The social cost of the rising demand for biofuels: the indigenous Guarani Kaoiwa community of Laranjeira Nhanderu were expelled from their lands 14 months ago to make way for sugarcane plantations. Photo by Annabel Symington, copyright Demotix (10/21/10).

The Amazon rainforest is seen as potential land for agriculture and as a source of raw materials and energy. Brazil's new forestry code, which regulates the use of the country's forests, has led to concerns and public demonstrations against the encouragement of farming and deforestation. “Green” agribusiness focused on biofuels and the replacement of felled trees with eucalyptus plantations have been shown to be unsustainable practices in both social and environmental terms. The dispute for land provoked by agribusiness led to the killing of activists and indigenous leaders during 2011. Yet Brazil is persisting in exporting its agribusiness model to other countries, such as Mozambique, regardless.

Coverage of events surrounding the Belo Monte Dam certainly caused the greatest outcry this year, uniting environmentalists, indigenous people and Brazilians living alongside the affected rivers. Protests in the immediate area of the dam and in major cities attracted international attention and challenged the human rights policy of Dilma Rousseff's government. This action did not wane after construction of the plant began, but rather took on different forms, including an Occupy protest by the Tupiniquim people and court cases.

These and related issues have been organised into four special features: Forest Focus: Amazon, Dossiê Belo Monte [only in pt], Indigenous Rights and Global Development.

Portugal: Crisis, Austerity and Protests

From the “Scraping-by Generation” protest in March to participation in the global protests on 15 October, Portugal has seen its political and economic crisis reach unprecedented proportions in 2011, with the fall of a government and the EU committee coming into the country to effect the financial “rescue” of public debt.

Keep calm and protest: outraged protesters outside Porto Town Hall. Photo by the protest organisers, 15 October.

Netizens took to social networks to mobilise action against severe austerity measures and to speak out in opposition to the racket conducted by the rating agencies, but also to gain inspiration from other countries, such as Iceland, on other forms of public participation.

Having launched a page devoted to special coverage of the current situation, Europe in Crisis, in September, Global Voices has acted as a bridge between different languages and has facilitated greater dialogue between outraged citizens from European countries that are suffering similar problems.

Angola: 32 Years in Power sparks Protests

In Angola the sense of revolt against the 32-year government led by José Eduardo dos Santos is becoming increasingly palpable in the streets and on the internet. Protests would have begun in March had the government not been successful in pre-empting them.

In September the police used heavy force to break up a protest, resulting in at least 18 protesters receiving prison sentences. Against all expectations, the movement has regrouped, while the number of citizen reporters in the country is also on the increase.

Video uploaded to the post Angola: Videos of Repressed Youth Protest in Luanda

Internet and the digital culture in Brazil

The fruits of increasingly widespread access to the internet in Brazil were borne out in 2011 by many creative, collective and effective examples of action. One such case was the mobilisation of social networks to take down a paedophile blog, and the call put out on Facebook to join in the unique “Different People's Big Barbeque Protest” in an upscale São Paulo neighbourhood.

Protest poster which reads "We want to be Maria Bethania", organised by Leon Prado on Facebook.

The online arena has also been the scene for a number of less auspicious episodes related to digital culture. In January the Ministry of Culture announced that it was abandoning Creative Commons licensing on its site, a blatant step backwards in public policy on the internet and copyright. Shortly afterwards, in March, the same ministry allowed the famous signer Maria Bethânia to raise 1.3 million reais tax-free for the creation of a poetry blog, thereby rousing the ire of bloggers, the twitterati and activists involved in the cultural sphere.

Cases of online censorship continue to crop up and, on occasion, overflow into the non-virtual world, with attacks on bloggers who are critical of the authorities.

In December we became aware of renewed death threats made against Ricardo Gama, who blogs against cases of the abuse of power and other irregularities by the Brazilian police. Gama had already been shot in an attack in Rio de Janeiro in March. Towards the end of this year, many were not convinced by the reason of “suicide by hanging” given for the death of Hamilton Alexandre, a controversial blogger from Santa Catarina, and social networks are being used to call for a thorough investigation of the case.

In 2012 we will continue to listen to the stories that are being told by the citizens of the world through the internet, and to amplify them so that they reach a global audience. Our doors are always open to anyone who wants to get involved in what Super magazine earlier this year dubbed “one of the 10 coolest projects on the internet”.

http://pt.globalvoicesonline.org/?p=25165

João Miguel Lima collaborated on this post.

Cape Verde: The Musical Legacy of Cesária Évora

Janet Gunter — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 07:12:04 +0000

On December 17, 2011, Cesária Évora, a musical ambassador of sorts for Cape Verde, left us. There was an abundance of tributes and declarations by her faithful audience, present in almost every corner of the globe. The singer, as well as the music of her country, were the focus of the blogosphere in recent days, and in the twittersphere Évora became a Trending Topic on the day of her death.

Julio de Magalhães, from the blog Do Médio-Oriente e afins (From the Middle East and the like) [pt] commented on the departure of the singer and highlights the music of her country:

Foi uma voz de Cabo Verde escutada e aclamada em toda a parte e, de alguma forma, um símbolo nacional. Dotada de um inconfundível instrumento vocal, como aliás grande parte dos cabo-verdianos, apresentou-se nos principais palcos do mundo sempre com extraordinário sucesso.

It was a voice of Cape Verde listened to and acclaimed all over and, in some way, a national symbol. Endowed with an unmistakable vocal instrument, as in fact a large part of Cape Verdeans, she appeared on the biggest stages of the world with extraordinary success.

photo shared by twitpic user @huygui

For Brazilian journalist Mauro Ferreira, of the blog Notas Musicais (Musical Notes) [pt] “a sweet voice of deep feeling has been silenced”. On her music, he says:

Voz que destilava a fina melancolia impregnada nas mornas - espécie de samba-canção da terra da intérprete - que entoava em crioulo, um idioma que misturava português, francês e dialetos africanos. Évora também deu voz às coladeiras, outro ritmo cabo-verdiano, mais dançante e próximo da pegada caribenha.

A voice that distilled the fine melancholy infused in mornas - a kind of samba - a song of the land of the performer - which she sang in creole, a language which mixed Portuguese, French and African dialects. Évora also gave voice to coladeiras, other Cape Verdean rhythm, more danceable and closer to a Caribbean step.

The blog Palavras Todas Palavras (Words all Words) [pt] commented in retrospective on the success of the album La diva aux pied nus (The Barefoot Diva), recorded in 1988, which alludes to the way she appeared on stage:

O álbum foi aclamado pela crítica, e em 1992 gravou Miss Perfumado, e passou a morar na França. Tornou-se uma estrela internacional aos 47 anos. Em 2004 recebeu um Grammy, de melhor álbum de world music contemporânea. Foi a cantora que recebeu maior reconhecimento internacional na história da música cabo-verdiana.

The album was acclaimed by the critics, and in 1992 she recorded Miss Perfumado, and went to live in France. She became an international star at 47 years of age. In 2004 she received a Grammy, of Best Contemporary World Music Album. She was the singer who received greatest international recognition in the history of Cape Verdean music.

The Portuguese blog Repórter a Solta (Reporter on the Loose) [pt] emphasized her great energy on stage based on a report from her shows in London:

Cesária não pára. Desde que, aos 48 anos, começou, em França, a sua carreira internacional, passa a maior parte do ano em tournée pelo mundo. Não está cansada? “É preciso aproveitar, agora que há trabalho”, diz-nos ela, como inconsciente de ser uma estrela mundial, como se vivesse nos tempos miseráveis dos bares do Mindelo. “Enquanto puder, não páro”. Na plateia, (…) são raros os caboverdianos, ou mesmo os espectadores de origem africana. São britânicos na sua maioria, famílias, casais, jovens, de meia-idade, classe média-alta…” Eles não percebem nada do que eu canto”, diz-nos Cesária. “Ninguém entende crioulo. Mas não importa. A música diz tudo. Entendem a música”. (…) Como faz ela aquilo? É um truque? Um sortilégio? Ninguém sabe explicar, mas está lá todo o fascínio de Cabo Verde.

Cesária does not stop. Since, at age 48, she began her international career in France, she spends the better part of the year on touring the world. Isn't she tired? “One must take full advantage, now that there is work,” she told us, as if unaware of being a world star, as if she still lived in the miserable times of the bars of Mindelo. “As long as I can, I will not stop.” In the audience (…) Cape Verdeans are rare, or even spectators of African origin. The majority are British people, family, couples, young people, of middle age, and upper middle class… “They don't understand anything of what I am singing,” Cesária tells us. “Nobody understands creole. But it doesn't matter. The music says it all. They understand the music”. (…) How does she do it? Is it a trick? A magic trick? Nobody knows how to explain, but there you have the whole fascination with Cape Verde.

Poster in homage to Cesária Évora written in creole distributed all over Lisbon, Portugal

In retrospective, and in a critical tone, anthropologist Miguel Moniz, guest contributor to Southcoasttoday, wrote about the space occupied by the singer on the international scene:

Cesaria Evora left Mindelo, Sao Vicente, to sing the morna on the world's great stages, winning a Grammy and becoming a chevalier in the French Ordre National de la Legion d'Honneur along the way. Although she had been performing on and off since the 1950s, it was not until the release of two albums in the 1990s that Cesaria would emerge to international acclaim in the “world music scene,” a ubiquitous though absurd catch-all category that seems to mean “music made by people from some weird place I've never heard of.”

Still on the likely unfamiliarity of the international audience with Cape Verde, the blog Passaport to wrote:

Not too many people know much about (or have even heard of) the tiny, 10-island West African country of Cape Verde. But even though relatively few actually understood her song lyrics, plenty in Europe, Africa, and the rest of the world certainly knew and loved its most famous native daughter. (…) But the lady has left behind a gorgeous legacy (…) that have taught the world about Cape Verde’s distinctive national music, called morna.

The directions of Cape Verdean music

Cesária and Maria de Barros. Photo shared by Maria de Barros on Facebook

And with Cape Verde in focus, a debate has arisen over who will take her place as musical spokesperson of the country.

The current scenario is quite far from that found by Cesária Évora. Attention was drawn to the fact that the majority of representatives of Cape Verdean music of the new generation are “daughters of the diaspora”:

As candidatas à sucessão de Cesária Évora como “a voz de Cabo Verde” são cabo-verdianas nascidas em outras partes do mundo, na maior parte dos casos em Lisboa. Mayra Andrade, a mais bem colocada, nasceu em Cuba e vive em Paris. Se Cesária Évora, falecida no sábado, era, é, “a voz de Cabo Verde” e o maior emblema internacional do país, o desaparecimento físico da diva dos pés descalços deixa vago, de certa forma, o lugar que a filha do Mindelo até aqui ocupava no panorama musical internacional. As candidatas à sucessão são várias e mais ou menos conhecidas, tendo em comum o facto de, ao contrário de Cesária, não terem nascido em Cabo Verde e serem, antes, filhas da diáspora crioula.

Candidates to the succession of Cesária Évora as the “voice of Cape Verde” are Cape Verdeans born in other parts of the world, for the most part in Lisbon. Mayra Andrade, the best placed, was born in Cuba and lives in Paris. If Cesária Évora, who died on Saturday, was the “voice of Cape Verde” and the biggest international symbol of the country, the physical disappearance of the barefoot diva leaves a void, in a way, a place that the daughter of Mindelo occupied in the international musical landscape up until now. The candidates to the succession are numerous and more or less known, having in common the fact that, unlike Cesária, they were not born in Cape Verde, instead being daughters of the creole diaspora.

Among the names cited are Mayra Andrade, Lura, Nancy Vieira, Sara Tavares, Carmen Souza, Maria de Barros, Danae and Isa Pereira. Some were born in Cape Verde, and others were not, some spent time in the country and others have not, and with various musical influences, as the case of Carmen Souza, who mixes Cape Verdean traditions with jazz, or Maria de Barros, with influence of Latin music, principally salsa.

There appears to be an effort to renew Cape Verdean music and make connections with other music, but with strong links to the roots of musical tradition of the country. What is notable is that the doors for Cape Verdean music were opened by Cesária Évora and the strength of her work, that in one form or another appears influential in the work of all of those singers cited above, be it musically, be it by inspiration and love for the country and for its language. And it is hoped they will continue on with her legacy in one way or another.

Whatever the future directions of Cape Verdean music internationally, the presence of Cesária Évora was unique and will always leave Sodade. Tom Devriendt, of the blog Africa is a Country, explains the meaning of one of the most beautiful words of the Portuguese language: “Saudade” (”Sodade” in Creole) - also the title of a song that made her famous throughout the world - and he shares the video for the song “Dor di Sodade” (The Pain of Sodade) from the album “Radio Mindelo” (2009) with old photos of the singer:

One of the many meanings of “Sodade” — that most difficult to translate Creole word — is a feeling of loss.

Lusophone Heritage of “Portugality” Around the World

Sara Moreira — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 13:50:21 +0000

A Facebook group and a mapping website called “Portugality” have been created to explore the cultures that result from the “global cultural fusion started by Portuguese navigations of the XVth. century and lasting to this day in places like Brazil, Mozambique, East Timor or Malacca”.

Cape Verde: Delicious Blogging on Local Gastronomy

Sara Moreira — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 15:56:28 +0000

Would you like to try the Cape Verdean famous dish, cachupa? Odair Varela explains the process of preparation in a photopost [pt]. For more on gastronomy from Cape Verde, visit the blog CV Na Pontu [pt].

Cape Verde: Ibrahim Governance prize goes to ex-President

Janet Gunter — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 12:51:56 +0000

Twitter users react to the Mo Ibrahim Foundation's attribution of this year's Governance Prize to ex-President of Cape Verde Pedro Pires. The $5 million prize dates from 2007 but went unattributed the past two years. Pires is the second “lusophone” politician to win the Prize, after ex-President of Mozambique Joaquim Chissano in 2007.

Cape Verde: Fishing Agreement with European Union

Sara Moreira — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:40:58 +0000

Cape-verdean journalist Odair Varela, on his blog, makes a critical analysis [pt] to the new agreement between Cape Verde's government and the European Union for the exploitation of the country's vast fishing resources.

Cape Verde: Cesaria Evora Retires

Vivienne Griffiths — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 15:17:12 +0000

Momar niang posted on their blog: “Following the advice of her Paris doctors to cancel her upcoming tour, Cesaria and her manager and producer José da Silva have agreed that she should retire once and for all. In doing so Cesaria is relinquishing the itinerant life that has taken her to the four corners of the world since her rise onto the international scene in 1991.”

Blogging in Portuguese on Special Education

Sara Moreira — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 09:20:39 +0000

The blog Grito de Mudança (Cry for Change) [pt] gathers several articles and resources on special education and children with special needs in Portuguese language.

Cape Verde: Presidential Candidates on Facebook

Sara Moreira — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 14:33:23 +0000

A group of Capeverdean citizens called Pioneiros de Cabo Verde have created an event on Facebook for the Presidential Elections that will take place on August 7. The event's page shares the Facebook profiles of the main candidates as well as videos of debates that have taken place during the electoral campaign.

Cape Verde: Blog Tears Down Statements on Climate Change

Sara Moreira — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 16:22:19 +0000

“Droughts are a well known fatality in Cape Verde (…) long before CO2 started rising”, argues the blog EcoTretas (EcoBullshit), while tearing down alleged misinformed statements from Al Gore's The Climate Reality Project.

Cape Verde: Demonstration Against Violence

Sara Moreira — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 13:43:02 +0000

The organization of a peaceful demonstration against violence in Cape Verde, scheduled for July 5, has already more than 12,000 accepted invitations on Facebook [pt].

Cape Verde: A Story of Accessibility

Sara Moreira — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 19:11:55 +0000

Daivarela, on his blog, tells [pt] the story of how a capeverdean journalist, Maria Zinha, has successfully received a diploma in Cinema and Audiovisual, despite the accessibility barriers she constantly faces in the island of Mindelo to do her job, where “stairs are the main difficulty”.

Cape Verde: Capital City Without Water

Sara Moreira — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 22:56:24 +0000

Since water stopped running from the taps of the capital city of Cape Verde, Praia, more than two weeks ago due to improvement works, at first, and then to a breakdown at the central distribution point, bloggers have been demonstrating with poems in portuguese and creole, and posting satirical and funny pictures.

Cape Verde: Creole and Portuguese Languages, an Unofficial Pair

Sara Moreira — Thu, 19 May 2011 16:38:31 +0000

This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.

May 5, 2011, was a day to celebrate Portuguese Language and Culture, as established by the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP) at the XIV CPLP Council of Ministers held in Cape Verde, in 2009.

The Portuguese language was brought to the uninhabited Cape Verde islands, by the first settlers five centuries before, in 1460. Though the Portuguese language is official in the country today, the national language is Cape Verdean Creole, which has nine varieties of Portuguese-based Creole, and these are the mother tongues of the population spread across nine islands that make up the country, independent since 1975.

A recent speech by the Minister of Culture of Cape Verde, Mario Lucio Sousa, in Parliament stated [pt] the need “to make the Cape Verdean language official, as envisaged by the Constitution, pairing with the Portuguese language.”

Anti-drug poem in Creole. Photo by the artist Joel Bergner, coordinator of the Global Mural Project "Action Ashe!" (used with permission)

Language and social spaces

The linguist Manuel Veiga points out the difference between “the linguistic status of the two languages” on the blog Sibila [pt]:

(…) enquanto a Lp [Língua Portuguesa] é língua oficial e do ensino, da literatura, dos mídia e das situações formais de comunicação, o Ccv [Crioulo cabo-verdiano] é língua de comunicação na família, língua das tradições orais, principal suporte musical, numa palavra, língua da oralidade e das situações informais de comunicação.

while the Portuguese language is the official language and the one used for education, literature, media and situations of formal communication, Cape Verdean Creole is the language of family communication, oral tradition, the main musical support, in a word, is the language of orality and of informal situations of communication.

Veiga goes further, mentioning in another article, that the politics of language in education favours the rich, who master the Portuguese language. Despite government efforts to promote Cape Verdean Creole in the country, Veiga says [pt]:

Para ter efeitos a longo prazo, uma política de oficialização teria de ser acompanhada por uma vasta implementação de condições estruturais direccionadas para a valorização do estudo e do uso do crioulo em todos os campos sociais.

In order to have long term effects, an official policy would be accompanied by a major implementation of structural conditions directed to enhancing the study and the use of Creole in all social areas.

The social role of Creole [pt] in education, particularly its adoption in primary and secondary schools, and also in religion, is often discussed, as was in the International Mother Language Day on 21 February, when the Comissão Nacional de Cabo-Verde (National Commission of Cape Verde), linked to the Instituto Internacional de Língua Portuguesa (International Portuguese Language Institute), hosted a debate on the issue and ended with a screening of the movie [pt] “Jesus” translated into Cape Verdean Creole.

Screbê Kriolu (Write Creole)

(…) alguns puristas da língua portuguesa começaram a considerar o CCV como meio de comunicação sem regras nem gramática; como mixórdia que não se pode escrever e que não tem importantes letras do alfabeto, como L de lei, R de rei, F de fé. Por tudo isto, o CCV constituía, no dizer deles, um perigo para a unidade do império.

some purists of the Portuguese language began to consider CCV [Cape Verdean Creole] as a means of communication without any rules or grammar, as a mishmash that one can not write and which has no significant letters of the alphabet, as the L of Lei (Law), the R of Rei (King), the F of Fé (faith). For all this, CCV represented, from their point of view, a danger to the unity of the empire.

The above quote is taken from the opening note of the blog KrioLUS [pt], from the University of Cape Verde. A few months before Cape Verde ratified the Reform of the Portuguese Ortography, in 2009, the Unified Alphabet for Cape Verdean Writing (ALUPEC) was adopted, aiming to establish an official standard for the language spoken in the archipelago, despite the variations of each island.

Diglossia: texts in Portuguese and Creole, Mindelo, Sao Vicente, Cape Verde. Photography of Francisco Santos with Creative Commons 3.0

In the comments section of an article on the approval of the ALUPEC [pt], opinions were divided concerning its formalization and implementation. Marta Velozo believed that:

Merecem palmas todas as ações que lutam pela diversidade cultural

All actions that fight for cultural diversity deserve applause

As for Pedro V, “the ALUPEC is an aberration”:

Mostra um complexo do colonizado porque rejeita a origem portuguesa da nossa língua. Qual a necessidade de reinventar um alfabeto se o que utilizamos para escrever a língua portuguesa nos serve perfeitamente?

It shows a complex of the colonized because it rejects the Portuguese origin of our language. What is the need to reinvent an alphabet if the one we use to write the Portuguese language serves us well?

A Cape Verdean blogger, Et, who has maintained the blog Lingua di Kauverdi (Cape Verdean Language) [CCV] since 2008 with extensive documentation, research and learning materials in Creole, advocates [pt] the adoption of ALUPEC and asks:

Como será materializado o desenvolvimento do ensino da Língua Cabo-verdiana em todos os cantos de Cabo Verde? Sem um código (aceitável) convencional, normativo para representar os sons da nossa fala…

How will the development of language teaching in Cape Verdean in every corner of Cape Verde be materialized? Without a conventional (acceptable) code, normative to represent the sounds of our speech …

On the blog Coral Vermelho (Red Coral) [pt], Ondina Ferreira comments on one of the final recommendations from the Encontro de Quadros de origem cabo-verdiana na Diáspora (Summit of Cape Verdean Professionals in the Diaspora), held in Mindelo (island of São Vicente) last month, which claimed that “Creole should be be better and more taken care of”:

Apenas estranhei, e muito, o facto de nessa mesma recomendação para servir aos falantes das ilhas, não se ter acrescentado igualmente a de Cabo Verde cuidar bem e melhor da Língua portuguesa que é também a nossa língua. (…) Ambas definem a nossa identidade cultural mestiça. Ambas são nossas com toda a legitimidade e legalidade. (…) A Língua portuguesa tão nossa como o Crioulo que nela tem origem, tem a idade da nação cabo-verdiana.

I only find strange, very strange, the fact that this same recommendation to better serve the speakers of the islands, doesn't include the Portuguese language which is also our language. (…) Both define our mixed cultural identity. Both are ours, with all legitimacy and legality. (…) The Portuguese language, as ours as the Creole that has its origin in it, with the same age as the nation of Cape Verde.

While in Cape Verde the mother language(s) are apparently being valued, researchers believe that the opposite is taking place in East Timor - “strugling so that its co-official language, Portuguese, is mastered by a bigger portion of the population” - , as reported [pt] on the blog Observatório dos Países de Língua Oficial Portuguesa (Portuguese Language Countries Watch). In a future post, Global Voices will explore the linguistic diversity of the first nation of the millennium, namely their online representations.

This post is part of our special coverage Languages and the Internet.

This article was co-written with João Miguel Lima and was proofread by Janet Gunter.

A Blog on Music in Portuguese and Lusophone Artists

Sara Moreira — Tue, 03 May 2011 17:14:01 +0000

To learn about music in Portuguese or by Lusophone artists, visit Caipirinha Lounge [en, pt], a bilingual blog “born out of a sincere belief that Lusophone music should reach a much larger audience”.