Neuza was born in 1985 in Praia, the capital city of Cape Verde on the island of Santiago. Her mother, who was born in the island of Fogo, had moved in Praia in the 1980s in search of a better life. There would sing in the city’s bars in exchange for food, tobacco and drink, while Neuza would stay at home in their humble stone house under the care of her older sisters.
Neuza was only 6 when the excess of tobacco took her mother away forever. The little girl went to live with her godmother in Fogo. She went back and forth from one island to the other while finishing her studies. From her mom, Neuza kept the sound of the melodies she had always heard her sing; a good ear as well. She soon learnt the traditional songs from the Island of the Volcano from the passengers singing to avoid being too bored or sick during that dangerous crossing. But she was reluctant to embrace a musical career; it recalled too many bad memories. On the contrary, when she became a mother herself, Neuza chose an ordinary life with a normal job.

But destiny was stronger than her will. She was working in a restaurant when she was 24 and due to her fun and happy personality, she often sang while setting the room before service. Her co-workers were stunned by the clarity of the young woman’s voice and encouraged her to take the microphone and give it a try in front of an audience. Hesitant at first, Neuza finally jumped in and soon gained more and more fans among the restaurant’s customers.
Later, Manuel de Candinho invited her to perform on the stage of a famous restaurant in Praia where she earns her first fee. That night, her lived changed. Upon the invitation of other artists, she started singing in other venues of the Cape Verdean capital. One day, Francisco Cruz, a friend, brought Jose Da Silva to listen to the young lady in a bar. The singer’s high pitched voice and her repertoire made of traditions from Fogo hardly ever recorded on disc decided the producer to offer to record for the Harmonia label.

At the beginning of summer 2013, “Flor di Bila” unveils the secrets of Fogo Island rythms such as talaia baxo, rabolo or samba. In “Trabessado”, one of the main titles of this album, Neuza gives an opportunity to discover curcutiçan, a traditional lyrical battle between female and male voices using irony and provocation, the women taking the men on their virility. Neuza presents this tradition from the countryside along with Michel Montrond who is an author, composer and singer and a volcano child as well.

Lúcio Matias de Sousa Mendes, better known by his stage name of Mário Lúcio, was born in Tarrafal on the island of Santiago in Cape Verde on the 21^stOctober 1964. He went to primary school there until his father died when he was just twelve. He was then taken in by the Cape Verdean army. When his mother died three years later, she left 8 orphaned children. Mário Lúcio completed his secondary education in the care of the military authorities and lived in the Tarrafal barracks, which had long served as a concentration camp during the colonial period. He won a scholarship which allowed him to study in the capital, Praia, then in 1984, a grant from the Cuban government to study law in Havana. He returned to Cape Verde six years later to work as a lawyer. In 1992, he was appointed cultural advisor to the Ministry of Culture. From 1996 to 2001, he was a member of the Cape Verdean parliament.

Mário Lúcio Sousa founded the group Simentera, which marked the seminal return of Cape Verdean music to its acoustic roots and claimed mainland African culture as an integral part of Cape Verdean cultural identity. His ideas brought him an appointment as advisor to the commissioner responsible for Expo 92 in Seville. At the fair – and later at Expo 98 in Lisbon – he developed musical projects to represent his country.

Mário Lúcio Sousa plays a range of musical instruments and has arranged a number of albums for other Cape Verdean artists. He is a founding member and director of the “Quintal da Música” association, which runs a private cultural centre dedicated to the promotion of traditional music. Children can learn and develop their talents there.

When did his talent for music appear? Back in his childhood, obviously. It couldn’t have been any other way. Many of his family were involved in music to a greater or lesser extent. You can’t escape your surroundings, the obsessions and passions of the people closest to you. Bau’s father was a stringed-instrument maker in Mindelo, the port of São Vicente island, the most famous in the Archipelago since the success of Cesaria Evora, also a native of this scrap of land that is also the home of many of Cape Verde’s greatest artists and composers. Rufino Almeida was born there on the 19th December 1962. At the time, nobody knew that he would one day be know as Bau, tour the world with Cesaria Evora, record several solo albums, leave his mark (“Raquel”) on the original soundtrack of a film by Pedro Almodovar, “Habla con ella” (Talk to her). When his father, who enjoyed playing the violin himself, handed Bau a cavaquinho when he was just six, he didn’t realized what it would lead to. He had know idea that as he grew up, his son (and he was to be his first music teacher) would fall unconditionally in love with this small, high-pitched, four-string guitar and become a virtuoso, like the instrument’s Brazilian master, Waldir Azevedo. Azavedo would later be one of Bau’s models.

When the boy was 17, he formed his first group, Gaiatos, with Tito Paris and Bius. Now he called himself Bau, a nickname taken from Djoy, a footballer in the local team that he particularly admired. Every weekend, he played with Gaiatos in Mindelo, in a discotheque called Katem, a club that has since been transformed and renamed Café Musique, where groups can still be seen today. When Tito Paris left for Lisbon and the keyboards player began his national service, the venture came to an end. It had lasted one year. A new affair began, named Grito de Mindelo, a group with a vocation for dance music, like Gaiatos. Their repertoire combined local styles (funana, coladeira), zouk and Marley. These were the days of open-air dances, very popular at the time, but which failed to stand up to the competition of the discotheques that became highly popular with young people in Mindelo. At the end of the 80s, Bau abandoned the electric guitar that he had generally played until then and began to work on an acoustic project, mainly drawing on Cape Verdean tradition with forays into Brazilian music. He was also determined to highlight the possibilities of the cavaquinho as a solo instrument. Why this sudden turnabout? “I discovered the range of our music. It was pointless to carry on imitating things from other countries when we could put our hearts into serving traditional music from our country, the music my father played at home,” explains Bau.

At the start of the 90s, he recorded his first album with the Mindel Band, including the first pieces he had written himself – “Mindelo” (Lusafrica) – and performed on “Mar Azul”, the album that launched Cesaria Evora in 1991. In 1994, he joined the singer’s orchestra and, two years later, became its musical director, before passing the baton to pianist Nando Andrade in 1999. From the beginning of the 90s, Bau has published 6 solo albums of a sparkling beauty.
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Jenifer Solidade is a young singer with a husky, modern, generous, incredibly stylish voice! Born in Mindelo on the island of São Vicente, she began her artistic career backing such great musicians as Tito Paris, Ildo Lobo, Nancy Vieira and Mayra Andrade.

Ultimately, though, it was in the clubs of Cape Verde that she made her name, particularly with her highly distinctive cover of Hit the Road Jack, she popularized the end of 2013 through a video.

 Jenifer Solidade just recorded her first solo album entitled “Um Click”, which means  “One Click”, in reference to the title “Cuidôd Na Click” (Be aware to click) in which the singer asks to pay attention to what you publish on social networks.

Dino Santiago was born in 1982 in the Algarve, southern Portugal province. His parents are from the island of Santiago in Cape Verde. Finalist in 2003 of a reality TV program on Portuguese television, he then pointed in various electro nu soul groups of the scene in Lisbon. He decided in 2012 to delve into the roots of Cape Verde, a fusion between traditional rhythms and fado.