Lura

Situated far off the north-west coast of Africa, the Cape Verdean Islands came to the attention of a wider musical public chiefly thanks to the legendary singer Cesaria Evora, who died in 2011. In terms of atmosphere, Evora’s music and the sound of her band were close to that of Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club: music full of charm, kindness and warmth. Lura retains these features, but moves the emphasis from Afro-Cuban to a more international style, gently transposing the diverse Creole, Portuguese and African influences of her guitar-based songs into a new era.

Videos of her sensuous, voluptuous songs often show the singer as prima inter pares, in the midst of a lively group of old and young people who live out their joie de vivre and the erotic side of life as if it was the most natural thing in the world. In the quartet with which she appears in Hamburg, there is no guitarist: the melody instruments are keyboards and a viola. But first and foremost we hear Lura’s wonderful voice, dark and heart-warming.