LURA

(CV)

24th October of 2024. Angélique Kidjo, the greatest diva of African music, celebrates 40 years in the business at the Gulbenkian Auditorium. Lura is the special guest at this show, where she commands the stage with her charismatic presence in ‘Carnaval de São Vicente’. In a rousing finale, singing Miriam Makeba’s iconic ‘Pata Pata’ in duet, she spots Anabela in the audience and brings her up on stage to bring this celebration of African music to a triumphant close.

Lura is fire. She is volcanic blood. A magnetic presence on stage. She dances with joyful fury, shares neighbourhood stories, and draws the audience into the Creole circle. She is Lisbon, Paris and São Vicente. She is morna, fado, coladeira, funaná, the rebellious drumming of the diaspora, Afropop, bossa nova, a plural identity so well reflected in the album Multicolor (2023). An album that includes a duet with Kidjo (Cetam), where Cape Verdean traditions emerge with new textures, painted in new shades, as if each track were a different island in the same emotional archipelago. Amidst messages of self-esteem such as Preta (an echo of Black Lives Matter).

A teenage backing singer in the 1990s, Lura shot to stardom with In Love (2002) and burst onto the scene with Di Korpu Ku Alma (2005), on which Na Ri Na became a global anthem of Creole joy. Seven albums on, Lura represents one of the most luminous ways of singing of the Cape Verdean diaspora, with respect for her roots and the courage to reinvent them. At a time when identities intersect and are questioned, her music shows that one can belong to many places without losing one’s centre.

When she pays homage to Cesária, the ‘sodade’ is real; it has weight, texture, and the distinct scent of an absence that cannot be resolved.

At the MED Festival, she marks a career spanning 30 years of activity, during which she has travelled the world many times over with a wealth of experience.