Kavita Shah

“Riveting... Shah’s vocals maintain pitch-perfect clarity.” NY Times

“A stunning paean to the iconic vocalist Cesária Évora.” Jazzwise

“Gorgeous” The Guardian

For the past seven years vocalist Kavita Shah has been busy in Cape Verde, an island country off the coast of West Africa in the Atlantic Ocean, immersing in the traditional Kriol mornas and coladeiras of her idol, legendary African singer Cesária Évora. The result is Cape Verdean Blues, a carefully curated love letter to Évora’s breathtaking archipelago and its welcoming people. Shah, herself a daughter of diaspora who resonated with the music’s language of longing, teamed up with Évora’s longtime bandmates – including Bau, Évora’s longtime musical director and master acoustic guitarist/multi-instrumentalist – to create her most personal work to date: this is music that makes you want to dance and cry at the same time.

At the heart of the work is “sodade,” an idiomatic word that lacks an English definition, but connotes a melancholic sense of transience that permeates Cape Verde and its music. “In this paradise in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, I found a sense of home that has eluded me for most of my life,” says Shah. “I realize now that Cesária’s voice summoned me down a path in search of my own sodade.”

Shah is a global citizen and cultural interlocutor whose work involves deep engagement with the jazz tradition, while also addressing and advancing its global sensibilities. She is a lifelong New Yorker of Indian origin hailed for possessing an “amazing dexterity for musical languages” (NPR). Shah speaks 9 languages—including Portuguese and Cape Verdean Kriol—and incorporates ethnographic research on African, Indian, and Lusophone diasporas into her original music.

This is an all ages event.

  Kavita Shah's Cape Verdean Blues

Kavita Shah & Bau - Joia

Kavita Shah

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