CAPE VERDE WILL HAVE A CULTURAL SHOWCASE

Mornas, cachupa, tabanca, pano di terra, grogue, funaná’ and much more: the sounds, colours and flavours of the Cape Verde Archipelago will be making their mark in Loulé's Historic Zone from 26th to 29th June at the 21st Edition of the MED Festival.

Cape Verde will be the next ‘Guest Country’, a MED initiative that took place for the first time in 2024, with a celebration of Moroccan culture. This year, it's Cape Verde's turn to showcase its musical, cultural and gastronomic diversity, and how it also relates to the diaspora, and in particular to the community living in Portugal.

This Tuesday, 6th May, the programme was presented at the Cape Verde Cultural Centre in Lisbon, before representatives of the Embassy, artists and the Cape Verdean community. The event's director and City Councillor, Carlos Carmo, announced the planned initiatives.

‘We are delighted to have Cape Verde as the ‘Guest Country’ for the 2025 edition of the MED Festival. Cape Verde presents its musical, cultural and gastronomic diversity at MED, through various events throughout the days of the festival. This initiative allows us to create an even more diverse and global programme, bringing the excellence and richness of this country's culture to Loulé’, he explained.

It is in the ‘Patio’, to be housed in the Cloister of the Espírito Santo Convent in the heart of Loulé at the end of June, that all the artistic events will converge. This space will be the epicentre of an immersive experience that will transport visitors to the essence of Cape Verde, celebrating the culture, traditions, contemporary vitality of the archipelago, its daily experiences and the landscape itself. This area will integrate art, sound, movement, gastronomy and the direct participation of the community, thus creating a sensory narrative for visitors.

Weaving, baking, pottery and basketry will be produced in real time, enriching this craft experience and strengthening the link with the islands' ancestral knowledge.

In the field of gastronomy, it will be possible to savour typical Cape Verdean food and drink, creating a direct connection between tradition, art and taste experience. The Cape Verdean community living in the Algarve is expected to make a community cachupa.

There will also be live musicians playing ‘batuque’ and/or ‘cavaquinho’, bringing the vibrant energy and melodic richness of Cape Verde to the heart of the Pátio.

It should be highlighted that 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Cape Verde's independence (5 July 1975), which is yet another reason to celebrate the country's culture and history. The MED Festival is honouring this anniversary.

 

MUSIC

The warm sounds of the archipelago will be present in Loulé, through artists who crossed the borders of Cape Verde many years ago, but also through the new wave of musicians.

Next Saturday, 10th May, at 21h00, Carmen Souza Carmen Souza will take to the stage of the Cineteatro Louletano for a concert during the final presentation session of the 21st MED Festival. The Luso-Caboverdian singer, baptised by the international press as the ‘Ella Fitzgerald of Cape Verde’ or the ‘new Cesária Évora’, combines a virtuoso jazz vocal technique with a series of Lusophone influences, ranging from fado to samba, from morna to bossa nova, including bittersweet ballads or the ‘Cape Verdean blues’. Today she is a strong world music personality and one of the most successful jazz singers. ‘Port Inglês’, released in 2024, is nominated for the German Record Critics Awardsin the category of Best World Music Album.

On the evening of 25th June, on the Castelo Stage, Ceuzany will perform the event's inaugural concert, even before the festival officially opens its doors. Born in Senegal to Cape Verdean parents, she moved to Mindelo at the age of two. She was the lead singer of Cordas do Sol, a group she left in 2013 to start her solo career. Her success has earned her numerous nominations at the Cabo Verde Music Awards and she won the prizes for best traditional song and best female performer in 2017.

Os Ferro Gaita are returning to MED this year for a performance on the 26th June. Ambassadors of funaná, they are one of Cape Verde's greatest musical institutions. They carry their land in their souls and rhythm in their hearts and, once more, they are bringing all the festivity and musical richness of Africa to Loulé's Historic Centre.

For the 27th June, the proposal is Cesária Évora Orquestrathe project that celebrates and keeps alive the work of the legendary ‘Barefoot Diva’. It brings together talented musicians and performers who take to the stage the repertoire that marked Cesária Évora's career, bringing her music to new audiences and reinforcing her cultural legacy.

On the 28th, in a special concert, musician Dino D´Santiago joins the iconic Os Tubarõesundoubtedly one of Cape Verde's greatest musical emblems and one of the most representative groups in the country's music during the transition to independence and democracy. Authentic legends, they have spread some of the most important pieces in the songbook of a country that continues to inspire the world with its ‘mornas, coladeiras’ and ‘funaná’. Dino, a son of the municipality of Loulé, needs no introduction for what he is today, not only in musical terms, but also as an activist for social causes, being involved in various projects linked to social equity and equality.

On the 29th ‘Open Day’, there will be a concert in honour of Cape Verdean singer Sara Tavares..

 

CINEMA

Cinema MED will include three films with a connection to this country. The highlight is 'Sodade'directed by Cape Verdean Sarah Grace, presented on the 22nd June, days before the official opening of MED'25, at 6pm, at the Solar da Música Nova. The internationally acclaimed film explores profound themes such as love, betrayal and hatred through the story of characters who experience the challenges and dilemmas of the diaspora. Filmed in the beautiful and striking volcanic landscapes of Fogo Island, ‘Sodade’ stands out for its impressive cinematography and for capturing the essence of Cape Verdean culture and spirit. It is the first Cape Verdean film to be commercially distributed in cinemas in Portugal and other international territories.

Released in 2022 by director Ana Sofia Fonseca, 'Cesária Évora' is an intimate documentary about the life and career of Cape Verde's greatest voice, with never-before-seen footage. A work that already has a cult aura. It can be seen at Cinema MED on the evening of 26th June.

Completing the Cinema MED‘25 programme, again curated by Rui Tendinha, is another documentary, 'Kmêdeus' (’Eat God'), by Nuno Boaventura Miranda. It portrays the intriguing story of an eccentric homeless man from the island of São Vicente, known by many as a madman and by others as a great artist. It will be screened on the 27th June. Also on this evening, the first images from ‘Terra Longe’, a documentary by Bernardo Lopes about Mindelo musician Jon Luz, will be launched.

 

ART

In the visual arts, ‘Transatlantic Cartographies’by the artists Fidel Évora, Jacira da Conceição, Amadeu Carvalho and Carlos Noronha Feio will be open to the public during the Festival.

‘Transatlantic Cartographies’ brings together, at the Espírito Santo Gallery in Loulé, four artists whose connection to Cape Verde is both intimate and displaced. They live outside the archipelago, but build a continuous dialogue with it - sometimes silent, but always present. Their works do not seek to represent the territory, but to map its traces, reverberations and reunions through image, sound, body and matter.

Each artistic gesture traces an Atlantic line of return and re-imagination. An emotional and political map drawn from mobile margins, where belonging is made up of fragments, eavesdropping and survival. In this exhibition, the ‘outside’ is not an absence, but an extension - a space where senses of origin, community and future continue to be constructed.

Fidel Évora With the series ‘Fake Self-Portraits’, Fidel Évora proposes a game between identity and fiction, presence and construction. The faces that question us do not seek to define the self, but rather to question the mechanisms by which it becomes visible. The practice affirms multiplicity as a natural condition of those who inhabit the in-between place - where origin is memory, but also choice.

Jacira da Conceição Through ceramics, iron, fabric and video, Jacira da Conceição invokes the strength of the African female lineage. Her pieces - such as Oráculo dos Búzios, Aruanda and Abraço II - turn the exhibition space into ritual territory. The material is memory that resists oblivion, a gesture that crosses time. Ancestry is here a living force, current, in continuous transmutation.

Amadeu Carvalho Amadeu Carvalho presents ‘50 Incognito Faces - Portraits of Absence’, a series of nameless portraits marking the 50th anniversary of Cape Verde's independence. Created with pigments from the Fogo volcano, the faces inhabit the border between presence and disappearance. It is in their anonymity that the power of a plural history is inscribed, made up of silences, absences and untold lives.

Carlos Noronha Feio Carlos Noronha Feio closes this tour with a sound and visual installation in which Cape Verde and the Atlantic listen to each other. ‘A building is made of more than memories of ancestors...’ proposes an immersive experience through sound and image. The sea, the echoes, the noises become the subject of sensitive listening - between islands, journeys and imagined returns.

‘Transatlantic Cartographies’ reveals how the archipelago extends beyond its physical borders, expanding in the voices and practices of those who, from the outside, continue to inhabit it affectively. These artists draw alternative maps, where the territory is experienced as a pulse, language and gesture - in a geography where distance does not diminish belonging, but expands it.

It can be visited from 20th June to 19th July. It is curated by Ricardo Barbosa Vicente (technical and cultural advisor at the Embassy of Cape Verde in Portugal) and João Serrão (director and programmer of the Loulé City Council Municipal Art Galleries).

 

LITERATURE

Cape Verdean writers José Luiz Tavares and Dina Salústio are the guests at this event and will present a conference about the country's literature. This initiative will take place at Loulé's Casa da Cultura - Edifício Atlético, on the 21st of June, starting at 17h30, as part of the programme that precedes the days of the Festival.

José Luiz Tavares was born on 10th June, 1967, in Tarrafal, Santiago Island. He studied literature and philosophy, and has collaborated with newspapers and magazines in Cape Verde, Portugal and Brazil.

Among the various awards he has received, the most notable is the Mário António Poetry Prize 2004, awarded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to the best work by an African author in Portuguese and from East Timor published in the three-year period 2001-2003, for his first published book, ‘Paraíso Apagado por um Trovão’.

Poet and writer Dina Salústio was born on the island of Santo Antão (1941). A founding partner of the Association of Cape Verdean Writers, the Cape Verdean Society of Authors, a founding member of the Cape Verdean Academy of Letters and the Cape Verde PEN Club, she is also a member of the Sergipana Academy of Letters (Brazil) and Vice-President of the Brazilian Society of Latin Culture for Cape Verde. Among others, she was awarded the 1st Prize for Children's Literature in Cape Verde (1994), the Prize for Children's Literature in Portuguese-speaking African Countries (2000), the Rosalia de Castro Prize for Literature in Portuguese - PEN Galicia, Spain (2016), and the RDP Africa Prize for Literature for Lusophony (2021). The PEN Award England (2018) was awarded for the translation of her novel ‘A Louca de Serrano’.

As part of ‘Falas Afrikanas’, a publishing project for African works and authors, a catalogue of the country's literary production will be presented.

The ‘Poetry of the World’ initiative, coordinated by João Pedro Caliço ‘Tapé’, is back and this time the focus will be on Cape Verde. In the MED Cinema space, poems and prose by Cape Verdean authors will be recited, both in Portuguese and in Creole, as well as from other nationalities.

 

STREET ARTS, CRAFTS, GASTRONOMY

The streets and alleys of Loulé's Historic Centre will be lined with entertainment groups performing traditional artistic expressions and rhythms such as tabanca, são djon, batuque and txabeta, mixing dances and drums. The performers will interact with the public, inviting them to take part in their own choreographies

At MED Kids, the space next to Largo da Matriz dedicated to the youngest, storyteller Adriano Reis will present the initiative ‘Stera - Na Boka Noti’, in which he will share Cape Verdean children's stories and games with the junior audience.

Potters Isabel Sanches and Edna Sanches Cabral will be at the Cabo Verde ‘Pátio’ every day to bring unique pieces to life and show a little of this ancestral art. The pieces will also be created during children's pottery workshops, allowing for connections with traditions and new audiences.

As far as gastronomy is concerned, on the ‘Open Day’ (free admission), Sunday 29th June, the Alcaidaria do Castelo will host a show-cooking event with show-cookingCape Verdean chefs Milocas and Fátima Moreno , who will show how to cook some typical dishes.

Some of the city's restaurants, including the historic Café Calcinha, will include dishes with Cape Verdean flavours on their menus.

 

During the presentation, the Mayor of Loulé, Vítor Aleixo, emphasised the involvement of the Cape Verdean community that has lived in the municipality for around 50 years. ‘We are fortunate to have in Loulé a community that came here, that fought, that helped the prosperity of the municipality of Loulé, that integrated marvellously. The fact that we are dedicating this edition of MED to Cape Verdean culture, in which the citizens of Cape Verde are also honoured, is something very beautiful,’he said.

Ana Pires, the Embassy's Foreign Affairs Officer, spoke about the importance of this initiative, which was welcomed from the very beginning by the former ambassador, now minister, Eurico Monteiro: ‘ ‘MED is a festival without borders and Cape Verde couldn't be left out. A team was set up at the Embassy, formed by Ricardo Barbosa and Zaida Sanches, who believed in this project. We found this event to be a ‘stage’ for us to promote Cape Verde in different cultural areas, because we don't just have well-known singers like Cesária Évora, but also other artists from other areas who should be known for their practice and the role they play in our society.’.

Singer Carmen Souza was also at the event. The Cape Verdean singer will be at the Cineteatro Louletano next Saturday for a concert as part of the final presentation of the MED programme. ‘As a Cape Verdean artist and as a woman who carries a mestizo and global heritage in her voice and body, I feel deeply honoured to be part of this moment. Seeing Cape Verde as a guest country at a festival like MED - which values diversity, authenticity and the encounter between worlds - is a beautiful recognition of the cultural richness of our islands,’she said.