Cape Verde is the guest country at the MED Festival in Loulé
Program presented in Lisbon
Mornas, cachupa, tabanca, pano di terra, grogue, funaná and much more: the sounds, colours and flavours of the Cape Verde Archipelago will set up camp in the Historic Area of Loulé, from June 26 to 29, at the 21st edition of the MED Festival.
Cape Verde will be the next “Guest Country”, an initiative of the MED that took place for the first time in 2024, with a celebration of Moroccan culture. This year, it is Cape Verde’s turn to showcase its musical, cultural and gastronomic diversity, and how it also relates to the diaspora, especially with the community residing in Portugal.
On Tuesday, May 6, the program was presented at the Cabo Verde Cultural Centre in Lisbon, in front of representatives of the Embassy, artists and the Cabo Verdean community. The event director and municipal councillor, Carlos Carmo, announced the planned initiatives.
“We are very pleased to have Cabo Verde as the ‘Guest Country’ for the 2025 edition of the MED Festival. Cabo Verde will showcase its musical, cultural and gastronomic diversity at MED, through several events throughout the days of the festival. This initiative allows us to create an even more diverse and global program, bringing the excellence and richness of this country’s culture to Loulé”, explained the official.
All artistic expressions will come together in the “Pátio”, to be installed in the Cloister of the Convento Espírito Santo, in the heart of Loulé, at the end of June. This space will be the epicentre of an immersive experience that will transport visitors to the essence of Cape Verde, celebrating the culture, traditions, contemporary vitality of the Archipelago, its everyday experiences and the landscape itself. This area will integrate art, sound, movement, gastronomy and direct community participation, thus creating a sensorial narrative with visitors.
Weaving, breadmaking, pottery and basketry will be done “live and in colour”, enriching this artisanal experience and strengthening the bond with the ancestral knowledge of the islands.
In the area of gastronomy, it will be possible to taste typical Cape Verdean food and drink, creating a direct link between tradition, art and taste experience. The Cape Verdean community living in the Algarve is planning to prepare a community cachupa.
On the other hand, there will be live musicians playing batuque and/or cavaquinho, bringing the vibrant energy and melodic richness of Cape Verde to the heart of the Pátio.
It is worth mentioning that 2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Cape Verde’s independence (July 5, 1975), which is yet another reason to celebrate the culture and history of this country. The MED Festival is the hallmark of this event.
MUSIC
The warm sounds of the Archipelago will be present in Loulé, through artists who crossed the borders of Cape Verde many years ago, but also through the new wave of musicians.
Next Saturday, May 10, at 9 pm, Carmen Souza will take to the stage of the Cineteatro Louletano for a concert during the final presentation session of the 21st MED Festival. A Portuguese-Cape Verdean singer, dubbed by the international press as the “Ella Fitzgerald of Cape Verde” or the “new Cesária Évora”, she combines a virtuoso jazz vocal technique with a series of Portuguese-speaking influences, ranging from fado to samba, from morna to bossa nova, including bittersweet ballads and ‘Cape Verdean blues’. Today, she is a strong personality in world music and one of the most successful jazz singers. “Port Inglês”, released in 2024, is competing for the German Record Critics Awards in the Best World Music Album category.
On the evening of June 25th, at the Castelo Stage, Ceuzany will perform the event’s inaugural show, even before the festival officially opens its doors. Born in Senegal to Cape Verdean parents, she moved to Mindelo at the age of two. She was the lead singer of Cordas do Sol, a group she left in 2013 to start a solo career. Her success earned her numerous nominations at the Cabo Verde Music Awards, and she won the awards for best traditional music and best female performer in 2017.
Ferro Gaita returns to MED this year for a performance on June 26th. Ambassadors of funaná, they are one of the greatest musical institutions in Cape Verde. They carry their land in their soul and rhythm in their hearts and, once again, bring all the festivity and musical richness of Africa to the Historic Area of Loulé.
For June 27th, the proposal is Cesária Évora Orquestra, the project that celebrates and keeps alive the work of the legendary “Diva dos Pés Descalços”. It brings together talented musicians and performers who will perform the repertoire that marked Cesária Évora’s career, bringing her music to new audiences and reinforcing her cultural legacy.
On the 28th, in a special concert, musician Dino D’Santiago will join the iconic Os Tubarões, without a shadow of a doubt one of the greatest musical icons of Cape Verde and one of the most representative groups of this country’s music during the period of transition towards independence and democracy. Authentic legends have spread through a now highly celebrated discography, some of the most important pieces of the songbook of a country that continues to inspire the world, with its mornas, coladeiras and funaná. Dino, a son of the municipality of Loulé, needs no introduction for what he is today, not only in musical terms, but also as an activist for social causes, being involved in several projects linked to equity and social equality.
A concert in honour of Cape Verdean singer Sara Tavares is scheduled for the “Open Day” on the 29th. This moment will feature the participation of Shout, Banda Filarmônica Sociedade Artistas de Minerva, the Mau Feitio project and also some guests who will be announced soon.
CINEMA
Cinema MED will feature three films with links to this country. The highlight is “Sodade”, directed by Cape Verdean Sarah Grace, presented on June 22, days before the official opening of MED’25, at 6 pm, at Solar da Música Nova. The internationally acclaimed film explores profound themes such as love, betrayal and hate, through the story of characters who experience the challenges and dilemmas of the diaspora. Filmed in the beautiful and striking volcanic landscapes of Fogo Island, “Sodade” stands out for its impressive cinematography and for capturing the essence of Cape Verdean culture and spirit. It is the first Cape Verdean film to be commercially distributed in cinemas in Portugal and other international territories.
Released in 2022, by director Ana Sofia Fonseca, “Cesária Évora” is an intimate documentary about the life and career of Cape Verde’s greatest voice, with previously unreleased footage. A work that already has a cult following. It can be seen at the Cinema MED space on the evening of June 26th.
Completing the Cinema MED’25 lineup, once again curated by Rui Tendinha, is another documentary, “Kmêdeus” (“Come Deus”), by Nuno Boaventura Miranda. It portrays the intriguing story of an eccentric homeless man from the Island of São Vicente, known by many as crazy and by others as a great artist. It will be shown on June 27th. Also on that evening, the first images of “Terra Longe”, a documentary by Bernardo Lopes about the musician Jon Luz from Mindelo, will be released.
ART
In the visual arts, the exhibition “Cartographies Transatlantic” by artists Fidel Évora, Jacira da Conceição, Amadeu Carvalho and Carlos Noronha Feio will be open to the public during the Festival.
“Cartographies Transatlantic” brings together, at the Galeria do Espírito Santo, in Loulé, four artists whose connection with Cape Verde is at once intimate and displaced. They live outside the Archipelago, but they build an ongoing dialogue with it — sometimes silent, but always present. Their works do not seek to represent the territory, but to map its traces, reverberations and reunions through image, sound, body and material.
Each artistic gesture traces an Atlantic line of return and reimagination. An emotional and political map drawn from shifting margins, where belonging is made of fragments, listening and survivals. In this exhibition, the “outside” is not absence, but extension — a space where senses of origin, community and future continue to be constructed.
Fidel Évora proposes, with the series “Fake Self-Portraits”, a game between identity and fiction, presence and construction. The faces that challenge us do not seek to define the self, but rather to question the mechanisms by which it becomes visible. His practice affirms multiplicity as a natural condition of those who inhabit the in-between place — where origin is memory, but also choice.
Jacira da Conceição invokes, through ceramics, iron, fabric and video, the strength of the African female lineage. Her pieces — such as Oráculo dos Búzios, Aruanda and Abraço II — turn the exhibition space into a ritual territory. The material is memory that resists oblivion, a gesture that traverses time. Here, ancestry is a living, current force in continuous transmutation.
Amadeu Carvalho presents “50 Unknown Faces – Portraits of Absence”, a series of unnamed portraits that mark the fiftieth anniversary of Cape Verde’s independence. Created with pigments from the Fogo volcano, the faces inhabit the border between presence and disappearance. It is in anonymity that the power of a plural history is inscribed, made of silences, absences, and untold lives.
Carlos Noronha Feio ends this journey with a sound and visual installation where Cape Verde and the Atlantic listen to each other. “A construction is made of more than memories of ancestors…” proposes an immersive experience through sound and image. The sea, the echoes, the noises become the subject of sensitive listening — between islands, journeys, and imagined returns.
“Transatlantic Cartographies” reveals how the archipelago extends beyond its physical borders, expanding in the voices and practices of those who, from outside, continue to inhabit it emotionally. These artists draw alternative maps, where the territory is experienced as a pulse, language and gesture — in a geography where distance does not diminish belonging, but rather expands it.
It can be visited from June 20 to July 19. The curatorship is by Ricardo Barbosa Vicente (technical and cultural advisor at the Cape Verdean Embassy in Portugal) and João Serrão (director and programmer of the Municipal Art Galleries of the Loulé City Council).
LITERATURE
Cape Verdean writers José Luiz Tavares and Dina Salústio are the guests of this event and will present a conference on the country’s literature. This initiative will take place at the Casa da Cultura de Loulé – Edifício Atlético, on June 21, starting at 5:30 pm, as part of the programme that precedes the Festival.
José Luiz Tavares was born on June 10, 1967, in Tarrafal, Santiago Island. He studied literature and philosophy. He has contributed to newspapers and magazines in Cape Verde, Portugal and Brazil.
Among the various awards he has received, he received the Mário António Poetry Prize 2004, awarded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to the best work by an African author in Portuguese and from East Timor published in the three years 2001-2003, for his first published book, “Paraíso Apagado por um Trovão”.
Poet and writer Dina Salústio was born on the island of Santo Antão (1941). She is a founding member of the Cape Verdean Writers Association, the Cape Verdean Society of Authors, a founding member of the Cape Verdean Academy of Letters and the PEN Club of Cape Verde. She is also a member of the Sergipe Academy of Letters (Brazil) and Vice-President of the Brazilian Society of Latin Culture for Cape Verde.
She has been awarded, among others, the 1st Prize for Children’s and Youth Literature in Cape Verde (1994), the Prize for Children’s and Youth Literature of the African Countries with Portuguese as an Official Language (2000), the Rosalia de Castro Prize for Literature in the Portuguese Language – PEN Galicia, Spain (2016), and the RDP Africa Literature Prize for the Lusophone World (2021).
The translation project of her novel “A Louca de Serrano” was awarded the PEN Award England (2018). As part of “Falas Afrikanas”, an editorial project of African works and authors, a catalogue of the country’s literary production will be presented.
The “Poesias do Mundo” initiative, coordinated by João Pedro Caliço “Tapé”, is back, and this time the focus will be on Cape Verde. In the Cinema MED space, poems and prose by Cape Verdean authors will be recited, whether in Portuguese or Creole, as well as by other nationalities.
STREET ART, CRAFTS, FOOD
Through the streets and alleys of the Historic Area of Loulé, entertainment groups will parade, bringing some of the artistic manifestations and traditional rhythms such as tabanca, são djon, batuque and txabeta, mixing dances and drums. The performers will interact with the public, inviting them to take part in their choreographies.
At MED Kids, a space next to Largo da Matriz dedicated to the youngest, storyteller Adriano Reis will bring the initiative “Stera – Na Boka Noti”, in which he will share Cape Verdean children’s stories and games with the younger public.
Ceramic artists Isabel Sanches and Edna Sanches Cabral will be at the “Pátio” de Cabo Verde every day to bring unique pieces to life and show a little of this ancestral art. The pieces will also be created during children’s pottery workshops, allowing the connection with traditions and new audiences.
When it comes to gastronomy, on the “Open Day” (free admission), June 29, Sunday, the Alcaidaria do Castelo will host a cooking show, with Cape Verdean chefs Milocas and Fátima Moreno who will show how some typical dishes are made.
Some restaurants in the city, including the historic Café Calcinha, will include dishes in their menus that feature Cape Verdean flavours.
During this presentation, the president of the Municipality, Vítor Aleixo, highlighted the involvement of the Cape Verdean community that has lived in the municipality for about 50 years. “We are fortunate to have in Loulé a community that came here, that fought, helped the prosperity of the municipality of Loulé, and that integrated wonderfully. The fact that we are dedicating this edition of the MED to the culture of Cape Verde, in which the citizens of Cape Verde are also honoured, is something very beautiful”, he considered.
Ana Pires, Chargé d’Affaires at the Embassy, spoke of the importance of this initiative, which was welcomed from the outset by former Ambassador, now Minister, Eurico Monteiro: “MED is a festival without borders and Cape Verde could not be left out. A team was formed at the Embassy, made up of Ricardo Barbosa and Zaida Sanches, who believed in this project. This event is a “stage” to promote Cape Verde in its different cultural areas, as we not only have well-known singers like Cesária Évora, but also other artists from other areas who should be known for their work and the role they play in our society.”
Singer Carmen Souza was also present at this event. The Cape Verdean singer will be performing at the Cineteatro Louletano next Saturday for a concert that is part of the final presentation of the MED program. “As a Cape Verdean artist and as a woman who carries in her voice and body a mixed-race and global heritage, I feel deeply honoured to be part of this moment. Seeing Cape Verde as a guest country at a festival like MED – which values diversity, authenticity and the encounter between worlds – is a beautiful recognition of the cultural richness of our islands,” she declared.
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