Notes from Cape Verde

Trio's music magazine, Sodade, helps keep ties with their homeland

Amilcar Carvalho (left), Nuria Chantre, and Osvaldo Dos Reis created their free magazine to keep people informed about Cape Verdean music. (Tom Herde/ Globe Staff)

As Osvaldo Dos Reis slips into a booth at the Cape Verdean restaurant Cesaria in Dorchester, he passes his lunch companion John Mooney a copy of Greek singer Eleftheria Arvanitaki's 2004 CD "Ola Sto Fos" ("Everything Brought to Light"). Dos Reis, along with Nuria Chantre and Amilcar Carvalho, created the Cape Verdean music magazine Sodade in 2005. Now he wanted Mooney, a Brownfield, N.H., resident who writes for the magazine, to hear the similarities between the music of Arvanitaki and Cape Verde singer, Cesária Évora, who once sang a live duet of Evora's song "Sodade" with Arvanitaki.

"Everything goes back to Cesária," says Dos Reis, a 36-year-old Brockton resident, of the singer who became an international sensation in the 1990s. "She opened the door for the younger generation."

With nine quarterly issues behind them, Sodade's editors Dos Reis and Chantre and art director Carvalho have created a way to keep people informed about the musicians of the past and the artists who have emerged following Évora's success. Since the first issue three years ago featuring the singer Mayra Andrade on the cover, the creators of Sodade have profiled stars such as Lura, Tchecka, and Sara Tavares; drawn attention to legends who preceded Évora such as Luis Morais and Eugenio Tavares; and covered budding local talents such as singer Emanuela "Nadia" Varela and producer Mark Goncalves. The magazine (www.sodadeonline.com) also focuses on people such as Arvanitaki and the Japanese singer Mio Matsuda, who find inspiration in the music of Cape Verde.

The volunteer efforts of Dos Reis, Chantre, and Carvalho have made them players in the Cape Verde music scene. They get scoops from record companies such as Lusafrica, in Paris, which helped Évora gain prominence in the 1990s, and Times Square Records in New York, which represents Lura and Tchecka. Dos Reis was asked to contribute to a chapter in "The Rough Guide to World Music: African & Middle East" on Cape Verde music.

"What we're doing is totally new," says Dos Reis, who works as an interrogator at the state Department of Social Services. "When we created the plan for the magazine we wanted to cover every aspect of the music. We have legends that no one knows anything about. We have producers that no one knows about. . . . If you don't tell the story, no one knows."

The Creole word "sodade" describes the homesickeness and nostalgic longing that Cape Verdeans feel for their country, a group of islands located 385 miles off the West Coast of Africa. Those feelings run deep among Cape Verdeans since about half of the country's people live abroad. The magazine's freshness comes from Cape Verde's unique history as a country that was under Portuguese rule until 1975. Cape Verde's official language is still Portuguese, and many Cape Verdeans know the colonizers' history better than their own.

The magazine Sodade helps Cape Verdeans reclaim the musical part of their culture.

"Sometimes we have a certain disconnect with the motherland," says Dorchester resident Omar Oliveira, 37, who has been reading Sodade since its first issue. "Through the magazine we're able to be exposed to new upcoming artists."

The free magazine is distributed at Cesaria Restaurant in Dorchester, Sons D'Africa record store in Brockton, and Liga Africa record store in Pawtucket, R.I. But the magazine reaches far beyond the Cape Verdean enclaves in New England. Letters to the editor come from fans in Germany, Brazil, Italy, Portugal, and Cape Verde, where the team sends half of the magazines printed.

Customers at Cesaria restaurant read the magazine at the table or take one with them if they order takeout, says the restaurant's owner Tony Barros. "It goes pretty quick," says Barros. "They gave me a case when it was released two weeks ago and it's pretty much done."

Sodade evolved from a website Carvalho created a decade ago. His parents played traditional Cape Verde music in a band. Carvalho remembers drawing with crayons as he listened to his parents perform. The website gave him a chance to unite art and music.

The first image Carvalho uploaded to his website was of Tito Paris, a guitarist and singer. "I was probably one of his biggest fans," says Carvalho, who borrowed a digital camera with a floppy disk from a friend to get the shot. Carvalho soon bought his own digital camera and began uploading photos of Cape Verdean musicians.

By 2001, Carvalho had transferred his site to www.cvmusicworld.com. A year later, Carvalho met Dos Reis, then a graduate student at Southern New Hampshire College, who added the last element Carvalho needed for his site: words. Dos Reis wrote for Carvalho a controversial article that questioned the place of Zouk, the dance music of Guadeloupe and Martinique, in Cape Verde culture.

"Osvaldo knew so much about the old Cape Verdean musicians," says Carvalho, a 31-year-old freelance photographer and Web designer who lives in Brockton. "I said, 'Oh, this is part of the puzzle that was missing.' "

The site now contains more than 5,000 pages, with an archive that includes more than 1,000 articles, 3,000 photos, and 500 videos. Dos Reis broached the subject of turning the website into a magazine three years ago when he, Chantre, and Gus Martins, a former Boston Herald sportswriter who has provided journalistic guidance to Sodade's three main volunteers, attended the World Conference on Cape Verde culture in Washington, D.C. The conference included such artists as Lura, Andrade, and the legendary singer Bana.

"Although the Internet is taking over," Dos Reis says, "I think people like to have the actual paper magazine."

Mooney adds, "Outside the US a lot of people like that tactile thing, to hold what you read."

The biggest hurdle was getting financial backing for the project. The three wrote and designed the first issue and printed a black-and-white version to show to possible funders. It was John Mendes, a member of the Mendes Brothers, a Cape Verde music group in Brockton, who handed Dos Reis a $500 check that finally got them to the $4,500 they needed to print the first issue at CM Fine Offset Printing Inc. in Taunton.

Yusuf Ghandi, president of Times Square Records in New York City, heard about Sodade when Tavares released her CD, "Balance," two years ago.

"When they first called," says Ghandi, "I realized they're the main force in the Cape Verde community in the US." Gandhi says whenever Sodade features his artists - Tavares and Tchecka have made the cover - they get good turnouts at their concerts. Gandhi also has noticed increases in CD orders from music stores when particular artists are reviewed or profiled in Sodade.

On the day Carvalho was interviewed, he was uploading two stories that showed the benefits of having close ties to record companies and music promoters. Chantre's story unveiled the group Ferro Gaita's plan to celebrate its 12th anniversary by performing for 12 hours in 12 neighborhoods in Cape Verde. Dos Reis's article announced that singer Mayra Andrade would perform at the Paleo Music Festival in Switzerland.

"We get the scoop every time," says Dos Reis. "I like to break stories."