Nancy Vieira

Nancy Vieira was born in Africa and it’s all said pretty much. From her way of being and unravelling things of life, emerges a torrent of emotions which, among sadness and joy, also reflects a sweet hope in a better world.
There’s no hate, anger or rebellion in her voice. Instead there’s an absolute coherence as sweet and proud as only a Cape-verdian could have.
She was born, by chance, in Guinea-Bissau in 1975. With only 4 months she moves to Cidade da Praia in Cape-Verde, her parents’ homeland, where she grows and lives until the age of 10, when her family moves again to São Vicente. From those times, she keeps memories of a happy childhood: “At night, we did without television, rather met with friends at the school square to play hide and seek”.
The School of Praia, the beach of Quebra-Canela, São Francisco, Praia Baixo and Tarrafal, car strolls with her parents, fill her recollections. She was a girl-scout, had dancing lessons and sang, but only to amuse herself: “I liked to go singing with my girlfriends to the Protestant Church in front of my house”. She reckons it had nothing to do with religion, even because she was raised within catholic faith; she just went there for the pleasure of singing.
In São Vicente, already a young woman, Nancy recalls the secondary schools Jorge Barbosa and Ludgero Lima, where she studied until the age of 14. There, the strolls were no longer in company of her parents but of her colleagues and friends. She kindly reminds the weekend’ baths at the beach of Laginha and Baía das Gatas.
It was in this scenery that her passion for music fully aroused: she used to sing among friends and at home, with her father playing guitar.
With 14 years old, she moves to Portugal. While she continues her studies in Lisbon, she goes on singing among friends, likeness to what happened in Cape-Verde, until 1995, when she presents herself in public for the first time in a contest from which she came out as the winner and which prize resulted in her first record, Nos Raça.
This record immediately caught the attention of her people, back at home or abroad, and definitely pulls out Nancy Vieira from anonymity, starting to score in the panorama of music from her own roots, along with other significant names such as Cesária Évora, Titína, Bana, Tito Paris, Ildo Lobo, Boy Gê Mendes, among others.
She took part in important shows like “Women of Cape-Verde”, in the United Kingdom (Tour 2003), next to other recent revelations, such as Maria Alice, Lura and Rita Lobo.
This was just another step to launch her career. With a higher relief and an excellent review in The Independent, she sets off to a new stage and to a new record, Segred, in charge of Toy Vieira (Production and Musical Direction) and Djim Job (Arrangements and Orchestration). And she definitely takes over the place where Cape-Verde’s music belongs: The Whole World.
Some say the Sea has always been there in Earth’s and Mankind’s History. Some say that the Sea is always the same; the waters are and will always be the same. The Path is always the same. We may also say that the Light which has been lighting us along the years and all these journeys is the same. Some times brighter, other times less, but always the same. It stays even in space. In Earth it’s always there, even in the darkest night it shows its reflection, in the physical space and inside our soul. It’s part of our history, of our paths, of our joys and sorrows.
Some also say that the Portuguese and the Spanish were the most travelled people throughout the world, but no one can forget the African people, who took part in every journey. With him he took his cultures, his attitude, his influences – most of them have its reflection in most of the more important folk music on the planet.
Lus, Nancy Vieira’s third album, thus marks a bet in the crossing between Cape-verdian sonorities, like morna, coladeira, funaná and batuque, and sounds from other places, namely Brazil (samba and bossa nova, already adopted as Cape-verdian musical genres) and Latin America – Peru (landón) and Cuba (danzón and son).
In Lus, Nancy Vieira stands up as a Cape-verdian singer, claiming all the influences that her people gave to the world, in a meeting between her deepest Cape-verdian roots and a musical universality.
With an entirely acoustic sonority, Nancy Vieira’s new album points out not only her undeniable vocal quality, but also the musical quality of the selected repertoire. The arrangements, mostly by the musical producer Jorge Cervantes, tend to an assumed simplicity.
Along with compositions by some of the best Cape-verdian authors of nowadays, such as Teófilo Chantre, Jon Luz, Princezito and Vadú, we find a theme by the singer herself, here revealing for the first time her feature of author/composer in “Vivê Sabin”.
Lus is a record of tradition and modernity, courage and love, nostalgia and joy, hope and celebration, destiny and longing, struggle and peace, from a C