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The culture of Cape Verde is rich, with a range of customs and practices common in the islands.
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One of the most important aspects of Cape Verdean culture is the beverage grogue , a strong rum made from distilled sugar cane on the islands of Santo Antao and Santiago. The beverage is made in towns such as Paul on Santo Antao and Cidade Velha on Santiago using a trapiche. A variation of the drink is ponche (punch) which is sweeted with condensed milk or sugarcane molasses. Due to the intoxication on consuming grogue, it is consumed by many Cape Verdean musicians seeking inspiration. [1]
Corn and beans are staples of Cape Verdean cuisine. Also popular are rice, fried potatoes, cassava, and vegetables such as carrots, kale, squash and fish and meat such as tuna, sawfish, lobster, chicken, grilled pork and eggs. One legacy of the Portuguese on the islands is olives and Alentejo wines which are still imported. [2] One type of Cape Verdean stew is a cachupa which includes mashed maize, onions, green bananas, manioc, sweet potatoes, squash and yams. [3]
Cape Verdean literature is the richest of the African Lusophone nations.[ citation needed ] Cape Verdeans have written both in the Portuguese language and in Cape Verdean Creole. Eugénio Tavares was the first author who published poetry (Morna poems) in Creole. [4] The rise of cultural, social, and political emancipation of Cape Verde in the 1930s was reflected in the literary reviews Claridade and Certeza , that published works from Cape Verdean authors like João Cleofas Martins, Luís Romano de Madeira Melo, Ovídio Martins, Jorge Barbosa, António Aurélio Gonçalves, Henrique Teixeira de Sousa and Baltasar Lopes da Silva (Osvaldo Alcântara). After independence, there are modern writers such as Germano Almeida, Manuel Veiga, Arménio Vieira, Orlanda Amarílis and more.
Cape Verde is known internationally for Morna , a form of folk music usually sung in the Cape Verdean Creole, accompanied by clarinet, violin, guitar and cavaquinho. The islands also feature native genres such as funaná , batuque , coladeira , and mazurka . [3] Cesária Évora is perhaps the best internationally known practitioner of morna. One of Cape Verde's most famous stars, on her death, one Cape Verdean restaurateur stated that she was "more important than our flag". [5]
Theatre in Cape Verde was mainly religious (biblical scenes translated into popular theatre) until the end of the 19th century, when cultural societies appeared. [6] Modern theatre arose around independence (1975), and received a great impulse by the establishment in 1995 of the theatre association Mindelact, which also organises an annual international theatre festival. [6] [7]
São Vicente is one of the Barlavento Islands, the northern group within the Cape Verde archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, off the West African coast. It is located between the islands of Santo Antão and Santa Luzia, with the Canal de São Vicente separating it from Santo Antão.
Cape Verde is known internationally for morna, a form of folk music usually sung in the Cape Verdean Creole, accompanied by clarinet, violin, guitar and cavaquinho. Funaná, Coladeira, Batuque and Cabo love are other musical forms.
The morna is a music and dance genre from Cape Verde.
Brava is an island in Cape Verde, in the Sotavento group. At 62.5 km2 (24.1 sq mi), it is the smallest inhabited island of the Cape Verde archipelago, but at the same time the greenest. First settled in the early 16th century, its population grew after Mount Fogo on neighbouring Fogo erupted in 1680. For more than a century, its main industry was whaling, but the island economy is now primarily agricultural.
Eugénio de Paula Tavares was a Cape Verdean poet. He is known through his famous poems (mornas), mostly written in the Creole of Brava.
Santo Antão is the westernmost island of Cape Verde. At 785 km2 (303 sq mi), it is the largest of the Barlavento Islands group, and the second largest island of Cape Verde. The nearest island is São Vicente to the southeast, separated by the sea channel Canal de São Vicente. Its population was 38,200 in mid 2019, making it the fourth most populous island of Cape Verde after Santiago, São Vicente and Sal. Its largest city is Porto Novo located on the southern coast.
Luís Romano de Madeira Melo was a bilingual poet, novelist, and folklorist who has written in Portuguese and the Capeverdean Crioulo of Santo Antão.
Cape Verdean Creole is a Portuguese-based creole language spoken on the islands of Cape Verde. It is the native creole language of virtually all Cape Verdeans and is used as a second language by the Cape Verdean diaspora.
Cape Verdean Americans are an ethnic group of Americans whose ancestors were Cape Verdean. In 2010, the American Community Survey stated that there were 95,003 Americans living in the US with Cape Verdean ancestors.
Claridade was a literary review inaugurated in 1936 in the city of Mindelo on the island of São Vicente, Cape Verde. It was part of a movement of cultural, social, and political emancipations of the Cape Verdean society. The founding contributors were Manuel Lopes, Baltasar Lopes da Silva, who used the poetic pseudonym of Osvaldo Alcântara, and Jorge Barbosa, born in the Islands of São Nicolau, Santiago and São Vicente, respectively. The magazine followed the steps of the Portuguese neorealist writers, and contributed to the building of "Cape Verdeanity", an autonomous cultural identity for the archipelago.
Cape Verde or Cabo Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an archipelago and island country of West Africa in the central Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about 4,033 square kilometres (1,557 sq mi). These islands lie between 600 and 850 kilometres west of Cap-Vert, the westernmost point of continental Africa. The Cape Verde islands form part of the Macaronesia ecoregion, along with the Azores, the Canary Islands, Madeira, and the Savage Isles.
Grogue, also known as grogu or grogo, is a Cape Verdean alcoholic beverage, an aguardente made from sugarcane. Its production is fundamentally artisanal, and nearly all the sugarcane is used in the production of grogue. The cane is processed in a press known as a trapiche.
The history of the cinema of Cape Verde dates back to the arrival of filmmakers in the early twentieth century. The first picture house was established in Mindelo around 1922, called Eden Park.
Cape Verdeans, also called Cabo Verdeans, are a people native to Cape Verde, an island nation in West Africa consisting of an archipelago in the central Atlantic Ocean. Cape Verde is a multi-ethnic society, which means that it is home to people of many different ethnic backgrounds. Cabo Verdeans do not consider their nationality as an ethnicity but as a citizenship with various ethnicities.
Tomé Varela da Silva is a Cape Verdean writer, poet, philosopher and anthropologist which he studies in an orally tradition and the musical heritage of Cape Verde in which he favored for the usage of Cape Verdean Creole in literature. Himself, he is the author of several poets and stories. His most important works were published in the 1980s and the 1990s
Mornas - cantigas crioulas de Eugénio Tavares is a Capeverdean collection of morna poems published by Eugénio Tavares. His poems were the greatest in the nation during most of the 20th century.
The Literature of Cape Verde is among the most important in West Africa. It is the second richest in West Africa after Mali and modern-day Mauritania. It is also the richest in the Lusophone portion of Africa. Most works are written in Portuguese, but there are also works in Capeveredean Creole, French, and notably English.
The cuisine of Cape Verde is a West African cuisine largely influenced by Portuguese, Southern and Western European and West African cuisine. Cape Verde was a colony of Portugal from its colonization until 1975.
José Lopes da Silva was a Cape Verdean professor, journalist and poet.