It was 4 pm, the mellow sun was about to set over the London skies. I was a student of Anthropology at London.
I made myself a cup of tea.
Pont Street was where the apartment was. Historically, I looked up, there was a bridge and a tariff levied on goods that crossed that bridge in the middle ages in that part of London.
thus the name
(the word tariff also has an interesting history:
From French tarif, from Italian tariffa, from Ottoman Turkish تعرفه (ta'rife), from Persian تعرفه (ta'refe), from Arabic تَعْرِفَة (taʿrifa, “tariff, rate”), from the root ع ر ف (ʿ-r-f). ). Tarif Ibn Malik was also a Berber conquistador of southern Spain.
I remember the moment very clearly. A nice cup of tea (from the world famous store few steps away ?), the mellow sun and the joy of studying Anthropology.
Then a song drifted in, the radio was tuned to a World Music station
My ears perked up
a soft voice, in a language i had never heard of
Cabo verdian portuguese creole!
The singer was Cesaria Evora.. thus began my long love affair with Cabo Verdian music of mornas and coladeras.. Ildo Lobo Jovinho dos santos. Alex veira Bau many others..
also emphasized the concept of Saudade..
Miss Perfumadu
Miss Perfumado
Saudade is a pleasant way to feel sad and in my opinion it brings its own pleasure and most importantly a sense of proportion to your life and being.
The saudade that began last night has continued to this morning. Saudade has a very purifying and more importantly a clarifying effect.
It acts as a prism through which you look at the people close to you, hold them up to a higher expectation of behaviour as if Saudade has made your own heart shine ..
Thank you Cesaria Evora
Cold days in early January 2012
At the Air France Lounge in Boston Airport? a vague recollection, on my way to Paris
My favourite magazine was lying around
The Economist dated Jan 7, 2012
As I opened it to the last page, there it was obituary to Cesaria Evora
I was crying holding the magazine in my hand, champagne to the rescue, as I am crying now, my heart full of saudade, for the hours and hours of music that Cesaria Evora brought into my life.
From The Economist 7 january 2012
- O mar, mar azul…
When musicologists wondered where the islands' songs came from—those sad, syncopated mornas that blended Portuguese fado, Brazilian modinhas, the laments of Angola and even, some thought, the shanties of British seafarers—she had only one explanation. They were about love, emigration, homesickness, looking for work, waiting for rain, missing people. And with their continual wave-like interlinking of one line into the next, their evenness and endlessness, so that it seemed she could go on singing them for ever in her limpid, lovely voice, they could only have come from the sea.
