Chalo Correia at Chapitô in Lisbon
Another mesmerising night of live music at the circus school, Chapitô, nestled under the ancient fort in the heart of Lisbon. And another chance to let the music do the talking on my behalf, about this charming & charismatic music Chalo Correia.
Also, a chance to practise my translation skills, key points from the flyer being: “Chalo returns to Chapitô. With a career spanning over 30 years, this Angolan artist, born in Luanda, returns to a house that knows him well, bringing new themes, always in his unmistakeable style, promising to transport us on a journey of memories, culture & African traditions. To the rhythm of semba, kazukuta & rumba, feel the magic of the Angolan singer at Bartô…”
‘Shouldn’t that be samba?’ I hear you ask. No. Apparently not. Viz: “Belonging to the same family as Brazilian Samba but distinct from that genre,[3] Semba is the predecessor to a variety of music styles originating in Africa…” courtesy of Wikipedia. And what’s kazukuta? I don’t know either, but Let Me Google That for You, & you might find something as entrancing as this:
The full version of which song is here, and sadly less entrancing without the dancing:
Or the very different experience on Soundcloud of Kazukuta Records:
But all that was rather a swerve away from the original focus of this piece, whose music you can get a good taste of here:
And you can find more of his music here on Soundcloud:
I was privileged to be able to talk with him during the intermission. The friend who brought me along knows him, and he joined us for a glass of wine. He merrily nattered away in Portuguese for a good 5 minutes before turning to me with a question – of course I just had to grin and mumble an apology that I am still learning the tongue here – so, apologies to you as well dear reader, that I cannot give you further insight into him and his music.
And you can see from my fantastically high-quality photo here that he got some people dancing – this was just the beginning! By the end of his set the whole room was moving, including your leaden-footed correspondent, who duly embarrassed himself, gyrating with a charming local lady.
I’ll leave you with this:
And what is sodade? It’s the Cape Verdian version of a fantastically untranslatable concept, uniquely Portuguese, for which I turn again to Wikipedia: “a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return.”
They even have an official day of saudade in Brazil!
