By the time we reached Praia it was rather late, once we had to drive around due to a road blockage caused by additional traffic the city saw itself involved in because of the international football game between Cape Verde and Morocco (which Cape Verde ended up losing by 1 against nill).
We spent a very pleasant evening at Quintal da Música, which is one of my favourite music performing places in Praia not only because there's a wide variety of singers and musicians and naturally musical genres, but especially because of the uniqueness of its overall atmosphere.
We had booked a table fairly close to the stage where the singer, musician and composer Manuel de Pina would be performing. What I didn't know was that he would invite several other Cape Verdian singers and musicians to sing and play along with the band.
We had booked a table fairly close to the stage where the singer, musician and composer Manuel de Pina would be performing. What I didn't know was that he would invite several other Cape Verdian singers and musicians to sing and play along with the band.
He sang quite a few old songs, many of which being of Angolan origin, he then moved onto Brazilian samba-like songs having invited his first guest - a percussion player, whose beating clearly defined the Brazialian drum -type beat. Soon afterwards a flute player, whose jazzy sound blended into the traditional Cape Verdian music beautifully and everytime a new guest singer took to the stage his performance seemed better than the previous one.
The three male singers, one of whom an amateur, had particularly powerful voices, and though very different in tone (the first more in a morna-like tone, with the second one being a lot more "aggressive" as if he were calling out for people's participation in an intimate straight forward provocative way, with the third one reminding me of the Atalaia-baxu singing genre from Fogo island).
Because it would soon be the International women's day several ladies jumped onto the minuscule improvised dance floor, Sonia having been one of them.
By the time we left, which wasn't too late (gone mid-night), we were fairly happy with the way we had enjoyed the evening and vowed to go back some time in the future (at least Noëlle and I).
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