Mario Lucio

I read the sun shines all the time in Cabo Verde. Now you are going to tour in Germany in January. Don’t you think it is sort of weird to tour in Germany in January? Do you really know what you are doing or did your management force you to do it?

ML- Good question because it has caused me a big smile. Fortunately, today nobody can force me to do what I don’t think is good for others and for me. I’m going to show my music and my country to other people and that can make them happy, overall if I can bring with me a part of my sunshine interior and exterior. To bring the happiness to the people around the World there is no suffering: for this intension I am able to go barefoot to Himalaya in January.


Your forthcoming album Badyo is your second solo album. Does it mean the end of your former band Simentera?

ML- I have quit Simentera before to start recording solo. In a meeting with all my friends of the Band I ask them to let me go, because I had other different ideas to work in capeverdean music. I thought I had finished that I had considered Simentera. And I was not there only for playing and make tour around the world and win some money. I was developing an idea, a project I had for capeverdean music, for my poems, my feelings, my traditions. All the members of the Band have understood my option. They have agreed. However I have asked them to continue. But they have stopped. I can not ignore that may be they need me, but a man can not be hostage of his own creation. I think in few years we can restart giving concerts together.

On Badyo you work with a lot of musical influences. Sometimes it sounds brazilian, another time african, you use jazzy influences, one can even hear country sounds. Is that blending/mixing the essence, the character of Cabo Verde music?

ML- Yes. As you can understand reading the booklet, Badyo is the first black man to be free in Cape Verde, an Archipelago that was non inhabited in 1460. So, these men from different African ethnicities are a part of our ancestors. But later they quit Santiago Island and go to Brazil, Cuba, Colombia, Santo Domingo, New Orleans, Louisiana, Europa. Of course they bring some rhythms, songs, and instruments, cooked in the Islands. I say especially from the Island, and not at all from the African continent, because they had created a new music with the miscegenation (Bantus, Mandingos and others playing together). To be honest, one of the main reasons that force me to make the research which is this album is to clarify the world about our music. Because, several times in Europe journalists have written that we have influences from Brazil, Cuba, Jazz, Blues, etc. That is normal because nobody had shown them before what is the universe of our music. It is completely the inverse. Is capeverdean music to influence Samba, Blues, Jazz, and others. But as we are a small and unknown country people need the reference to understand us. What I am trying to do is to show that you can not understand those references if you don’t understand the passage of the Badyo, of the capeverdean culture and traces around the world. I don’t work with a lot of musical influences, I just work on my multiple roots. We are at the former origin of the actual mestizo, we can explain the music of the Atlantic Slave Trading routes. It starts in Cape Verde Islands in former 15th century. Of course we have to add to our African roots the Europeans heritages as Valsa, Mazurca, Country dance, Polska, March, what also are at the origin of this mixage. The world knows only one side of capeverdean music.

Don’t you fear to ask too much of your audience with this tremendous mix? Who do you think is your audience?

ML- I think my audience is people with an open mind, open soul, spirit, and horizon. People who want to understand this world for better understanding other, for better conviviality between all cultures, differences and peoples. We human kind are a mix, that’s why we are diverse and one. If our main goal is to include, we can eliminate the discrimination. I want to say that I feel the world into my music, into me, and that I feel my music and me into the world. I think that after genetics elements which make us equal, the only thing that can make us feel as the same is our mix. The only thing pure we have in the Universe is the mixture. Everybody knows that. I’m just one voice. I don’t thin I ask too much because I just ask each one in my audience to identify himself with just one song, to identify himself with what he find close to him, and don’t hinder others to do the same, even when this other is identifying himself with a song that his neighbour don’t love. I expect to play about 20 songs. Are we so different?


It seems everybody talking about world music but no one knows exactly what it is. Do you have a smart definition for us?

ML- World music is that music that you don’t believe it exists.

For how long are you in music business?

ML- I have neve - by Bernd Lubienetzki for Unruhr Magazine