Epress.am News from Armenia
Cesária Évora, better known as the ‘Barefoot Diva’ for her habit of always performing shoeless in solidarity with her native Cape Verde’s poverty, has died at the age of 70 on her home island of São Vicente. Évora first mastered the soulful bittersweet morna singing style — a close relative of the haunting Portuguese fado ballads originally sung by sailors’ wives — as a teenager singing at bars in the port city of Mindelo where she grew up. Only later in life, after a decade-long hiatus, did she earn wide praise and comparisons to American jazz legend Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf’s quiet raspiness. In 2004, she won the World Music Grammy for her album Voz D’Amor (or “voice of love”), nymag.com reports.
But for all her world fame, Évora was unapologetically rooted in her small, struggling island nation off the coast of Senegal. “In Cape Verde, lots of people are like me,” she told the Washington Post in 2001, “They just don’t like to wear shoes.” Speaking to HeadButler.com’s Jesse Kornbluth almost a decade ago, she said: “Whatever the rest of the world may think of me now, I was always considered a great singer at home. But we all know each other. There’s no ‘stardom’ in Cape Verde.”
Évora had canceled several concerts before announcing the end of her career on Sept. 23 because of health problems. In recent years she had undergone a number of operations, including open-heart surgery in May 2010.
Her last tour was scheduled to take her to Armenia, Romania, France, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
While the specific cause of death remains unknown, Évora was hospitalized on Friday with respiratory failure, heart problems and pulmonary edema. She was also an inveterate smoker and would often take a break mid-concert to sit at a table (onstage) and smoke a cigarette. She died at dawn on Saturday.
Photo of Évora at WOMAD 2007 by Damien Rafferty (Flickr).