A fresh and resolute breeze is blowing from Cabo Verde, the archipelago off the West Coast of Africa. Digging deep down to their own roots, Simentera present a music of incomparable soul-stirring depth and rhythmic verve. The delicacy of the acoustic instrumentation, airy voices and the outward-looking song-writing revitalize Cape Verde's mornas, coladeras and funanás , to quote only a few of the islands' musical expressions.
However, Simentera have carefully kept the melodic poetry and the languorous rhythms so typical of Cabo Verde, at once sad like all the sadness of this world and as happy as the radiant sun, full of love and suffering, and naturally of sodade, that bitter-sweet mixture of memory and hope.
With their album Cabo Verde en Serenata, the group have given birth to a music which lends a voice to the earth, the sea and the wind, a music which evokes the mysterious light that spreads across the sky when the rains finally come, a grace that simply delights all over again. —Courtesy Calabash Music
