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Artist List:
Amampondo
Amjad Ali Khan
Asad Qizilbash
Bembeya Jazz
Chico Cesar
Clave Y Guaguanco
Eliza Carthy Big Band
Ensemble Kaboul
Jimmy Cliff
Julien Jacob
LoJo
Manecas Costa
Manu Dibango and
Ray Lema
Nitin Sawhney
Ojos de Brujo
Oumou Sangare
Pape and Cheikh
Samba Sunda
Sevara Nazarkhan
Sierra Maestra
Super Rail Band
Temple of Sound
Teofilo Chantre
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Profile:
Teofilo Chantre
 
Before Cesaria Evora released "Miss Perfumado" in 1992, Cape Verde was just a melancholy group of islands hidden from the world by the salty Atlantic surf. The barefoot diva's misty blue vocals put the archipelago on the musical map, but the huge success of the album was also due to the sad enveloping brilliance of the songs.
Teofilo Chantre wrote three of them. Soon afterwards he penned the lyrics for the "Ausencia", a song written by star Balkan composer Goran Bregovic, which Evora sang for the soundtrack of Emir Kusturica's acclaimed epic "Underground".
Chantre is the champion of a particular kind of Cap Verdian sound; gentle, soulful, hovering between the velvet lilt of Brazilian bossa nova and the down-home jaunt of Cuban charanga and liberally doused in the deep blue vapour of saudade, that unquantifiable, world weary and yet life affirming emotion that permeates most of the sounds that come from the islands.
His three albums for the prolific lusophone label Lusafrica have turned him into a star, whose attraction is felt way beyond the confines of the various ex-pat Cap Verdian communities in countries like Holland, Portugal and the USA. On his latest CD 'Rodatempo' he performs the slow mornas and slightly faster coladeros that form the main part of Cap Verde's super-rich musical treasury, using his favourite line-up of guitar, violin, piano and cavaquinho, a small mandolin like Cap Verdian guitar, and records with musicians who have been at the vanguard of the Cap Verde revival, guitarist Bau, bass player José Paris and composer Amandio Cabral, as well as his own father, Vitorino Chantre.
Some have called Teofilo Chantre's music sophisticated but it's nothing more than soulful and beautiful.
Biography by Andy Morgan, July 2003
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