artist info

"She surely will be compared to the late Cesária Evora, but rather than signaling a derivative performance the association should land like a salve for starved ears and lonesome hearts." —KBCS

Lucibela grew up on São Vicente, whose port Mindelo is famous for a number of reasons. The city was home to one of the first high schools in the Portuguese colonies. Amilcar Cabral studied there before he became the father of independence in 1975. Lucibela’s mother was a widow with a state pension. Determined that her children would receive a good education, she moved to Mindelo and enrolled them at the school.

Lucibela loves to sing and Mindelo is also a musical paradise thanks to the Brazilian, Cuban, British and Portuguese sailors who sowed the seeds of morna and coladera there. Those Creole fusion genres were introduced to the world by one of their most illustrious performers: Cesária Evora, a native of Mindelo.

Beneath Lucibela’s sweet, smiling exterior is a woman who has also experienced life’s hardships. That inevitable involvement of fate in art undoubtedly gifted the girl with her extremely feminine intuition. When she was in the last year of high school, her mother died and left the family destitute. To follow the dreams of her lost mother, Lucibela had to find a job that paid... and the teenager had a talent: singing. She adored bossa nova, of course, but also listened to Brazilian pop on the radio. So, she formed a group with friends who, like her, preferred jazz and rock to traditional genres.

Lucibela shrewdly realized that she could earn a living by singing in the hotels and bars of Mindelo, frequented by tourists who wanted to hear local songs. So, she began to cover Cesária Evora’s repertoire, beginning with “Nutridinha,” a joyous, beautifully crafted song about bad girls.

Lucibela joined the Mindel Som band and left for the island of Sal, where she re-energized the role of hotel singer, especially at the Morabeza. Then she was offered a contract to sing on the sand-dune island of Boa Vista. She remembers working hard and learning a lot about vocal technique, the repertoire and the secrets of winning over audiences. In 2012, she went to live in her country’s capital, Praia, where she encountered Kaku Alves, Cesária Evora’s guitarist for nearly 15 years. Lucibela sang at the Quintal da Musica and took part in the television talent contests Talento Estrela and Estrela Pop, reaching the final.

Her second album AMDJER (release date 06/2022) is a tribute to Cape Verdean women, but also to women in general. Here are depicted the facts of daily life, which reflect not only their sorrows, their anxieties and their challenges, but also their strength and their determination to overcome, the joy of living and the theme of love, universal to all.

Composed mostly of unreleased songs, this album brings together 12 songs by composers and authors from Cape Verde of different generations such as Nhelas Spencer, Luis Lima, Toy Vieira, Tibau Tavares, Miquinha, Elida Almeida, Ary Duarte, Daya, a former popular theme of Cape Verdean music and an unpublished bolero by Cuban composer and artist Emilio Moret.

“She has been compared to the late Cesária Évora but Évora had a throaty, slightly smoky alto. Lucibela’s voice is a lighter, almost honeyed mezzo-soprano, and she adds a little more swing and nuance to her rhythms. Influences of jazz, rock and Brazilian bossa nova permeate her music, and she often sings in Portuguese” —Mivhael Muckian, Isthmus