Carmen Souza combines English seaside shacks with Cape Verdean rhythms

When she was a small child and taking too long to get ready for school, family gatherings or singing in the church choir, Cape Verdean musician Carmen Souza was often called “ariope”.

What she didn't realize until years later was that the Creole word came directly from the English word “hurry.”

“We have so many words that come from British English,” Souza, a jazz singer, songwriter and instrumentalist, told the BBC.

“'Salong' is 'so long,' 'fulespide' is 'full speed,' 'streioei' is 'straight,' 'bot' is 'boat,' and 'ariope'—which I always remember my father telling me, when he wanted to pick up the pace.”

Ariope is now one of eight songs Souza has composed for the album Port'Inglês – meaning English Port – exploring the little-known history of the 120-year British presence in Cape Verde. It started as research for her master's degree.

“Cape Verdeans are very connected to music – in fact we always say music is our biggest export – so I wondered if there was a musical impact as well,” she says.

There are very few recordings of compositions from that time – Sousa discovered that the American ethnomusicologist Helen Heffron Roberts had recorded some in the 1930s, but they were on very fragile wax cylinders and could only be heard in person at Yale University in USA.

So instead of re-arranging old recordings, Souza — and her musical partner Theo Pascal — created new music inspired by stories she came across.

She has combined jazz and English sea shanties with Cape Verdean rhythms – including funaná, played on an iron stick with a knife and accordion, and batuque, played by women and based on African drum rhythms.

The Cape Verde Islands are located about 500 km (310 mi) off the coast of West Africa. They are mostly dry, with limited arable land and prone to drought.

But they are a strategic midpoint in the Atlantic Ocean and were first controlled by the Portuguese as they traded between Southeast Asia, Europe and the Americas – with spices, silk and enslaved people. With the abolition of the slave trade, Cape Verde declined.

Cape Verde remained a Portuguese colony until 1975, but British traders settled in the 18th and 19th centuries and Cape Verde once again became a busy crossroads.

The British came for the cheap labor, goats, donkeys, salt, tortoises, amber, and archil, a special ink that was used in the production of British clothing.

They built roads, bridges and developed the natural harbors – which became known as Port'Inglês – and established coaling stations with coal brought from Wales.

The port of Mindelo on São Vicente became a vital refueling stop for steamships carrying goods across the Atlantic or to Africa – and an important global communications center with the arrival of an undersea cable station in 1875.

Souza's inquiry into the British presence in Cape Verde quickly became personal.

“When I started researching, I found so many personal connections,” says Souza — including the fact that her grandfather loaded coal on ships in Mindelo.

This inspired her to write Ariope, the story of an elderly man who calls a younger man who prefers to stay in the shadows and play his guitar to “ariope”. The British ships are coming and the sailors don't like to wait – “fulespide, streioei”, goes the song.

Souza imagines the spirit of his grandfather in the song. He played the violin and was known as a great storyteller.

“They told me that if you had to walk with him for miles, you wouldn't notice the distance because it would be one funny story after another.”

Souza is part of the large Cape Verdean diaspora. She was born in Portugal and now lives in London. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), there are about 700,000 Cape Verdeans living abroad – twice as many as at home.

Historically, people have been forced to move for work due to famine, drought, poverty and lack of opportunity.

This movement contributed to the islands' deep, rich tradition of highly distinctive music, including the melancholic morna made famous by the singer Cesaria Evora and designated by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2019.

The composer behind many of the songs that made Evora a global star was Francisco Béleza – also known as B Léza. He revolutionized morna and was one of the most influential morna writers, composers and singers in Cape Verde.

According to Souza's research, he also believed that the British presence was more beneficial than the Portuguese – at least for middle-class Cape Verdeans.

Souza's track Amizadi, a mix of funaná and jazz, was inspired by B Léza's admiration for the British. He composed morna – Hitler ca ta ganha guerra, ni nada, meaning “Hitler will not win the war” to show solidarity with the British people during World War II – and even raised money for the British war effort.

Souza found that the ports were “an important center for musicians” who flocked there to learn the music – and the instruments – of visiting foreign sailors.

They mixed them with the rhythms of Cape Verde to create new sounds. Mazurka – derived from a Polish musical form – and contradance from the British quadrille dance.

Early written records of Cape Verdean music are scarce—Portuguese colonists did not document Cape Verdean life and society beyond records of taxes and goods.

They also banned batuque – because it was too loud and too African – and funaná because its lyrics challenged social inequalities.

But Sousa discovered an intriguing entry in the diary of British naturalist Charles Darwin, who arrived in Cape Verde in 1832. – the first stop on his famous journey with a beagle to study the living world.

He described meeting a group of about 20 young women who, Darwin wrote, “were singing with great energy a wild song, beating their hands on their feet.”

This, says Souza, is most likely an early rendition of the batuque – and she was inspired to write the song Sant Jago by Darwin's accounts of the warm hospitality he received in Cape Verde.

Many younger Cape Verdean musicians tend not to play the islands' older rhythms, and some such as the contradance are slowly dying out.

Souza hopes her Port'Inglês album will inspire younger generations that “there is a way to do something new with traditional genres”.

“I always bring in different elements—improvisation, piano, flute, jazz harmonization—so that the music goes through another process of creolization.”

Port'Inglês by Carmen Souza is released via Galileo MC