Mayra Andrade: the cosmopolitan voice of Cape Verde

At sixteen, Mayra Andrade won first prize in the songwriting competition at the Francophonie Games in Ottawa. Twenty years later, she performed at London’s Union Chapel before an audience captivated by a music that refuses all borders. Born in Havana, raised between Senegal, Angola and Germany, first settled in Paris then Lisbon, the Cape Verdean singer embodies a nomadic generation that makes of the ocean its bridge rather than its prison¹.

In brief

Key dates

Roots, genres and commitment

Mayra Andrade’s musical universe was forged long before her first album. Her father, a soldier engaged in Cape Verde’s independence war, had arranged for his wife to give birth in Havana for medical reasons. Upon returning to Cape Verde, Mayra grew up on the island of Santiago, where she spends about two months each year². This island is the stronghold of funaná and batuque, two percussive African styles that the colonial elite despised. It is precisely this music that captivates the young woman.

By chance of migration, she heard Césaria Évora for the first time at age twelve. The “barefoot diva” became her mentor. “It is the audience that decides whether to lift you up or let you fall,” she advised her³. Mayra will never forget. Later, she met Orlando Pantera, an innovative composer who renewed Cape Verdean music by fusing African rhythms with Portuguese melodies. When Pantera died in 2001 at thirty-three, he had not yet published any album. Mayra then chose to sing his tracks to carry on his legacy.

Her first album, Navega, arrived in 2006. Acoustic and raw, it was recorded at the pace of three songs per day, sung in Cape Verdean Creole with only one incursion in French, Comme s’il en pleuvait, written by Brazilian composer Tété. The second album, Stória, stória…, released in 2009, brought together a cosmopolitan team of musicians in Paris. Guinean Djeli Moussa Diawara on kora, Cameroonian Étienne M’Bappé on bass, Brazilian Marcos Suzano on percussion. It received the Deutsche Schallplattenkritik prize and consolidated Mayra’s international reputation. The live album Studio 105 was recorded in public at Paris’s Maison de la Radio in 2010⁴.

But it is with Lovely Difficult (2013) that Mayra Andrade fully embraces her métissage. Benjamin Biolay and Tété wrote lyrics for her; Yael Naim, Piers Faccini and Hugh Coltman are among the guests⁵. The album alternates Creole, Portuguese, French and English. It received a nomination for Victoires de la Musique in the world music category.

Settled in Lisbon since 2016, Mayra Andrade published Manga in 2019, recorded between Abidjan and Paris, blending afrobeats, urban music and traditional Cape Verdean rhythms. In 2024, reEncanto, recorded live at London’s Union Chapel, gathers twenty years of career in an intimate project featuring guitar and vocals, with the ambition to leave a lasting trace. “If I were to disappear today, I would want people to discover me through this album,” she confides⁶.

Mayra Andrade is not just an artist: she is an ambassador⁷. Since 2015, she has been the patron of the United Nations’ “Free and Equal” campaign for LGBT rights in Cape Verde, the first African country to launch this initiative. “Homosexuality is not criminalized in Cape Verde, but discrimination and homophobia must be,” she declared to the UN Radio. Her music, constantly evolving, refuses categories and borders. She has collaborated with Angelique Kidjo, Youssou N’Dour and Ivorian 2B, and performed at London’s Barbican as the opener for Gilberto Gil’s show. But her deepest commitment remains rooted in her language and land. “I make music for myself,” she says. “I must surprise myself, otherwise it’s boring.”

Major works

Sources and references