Laco Umbilical

Lucibela is a smile; a fresh breeze ruffling the bougainvillea blooms and wave tops. The young Cabo-Verdean was born in 1986 on São Nicolau, one of the Barlavento islands - the 'windward' isles to the north of the Sahel archipelago.

Now she has made her first album, Laço umbilical, the cord that links the singer to her land. Over its thirteen tracks, Lucibela-the-voice-of-gold explores the issues involved: being a woman and a Cabo-Verdean, living far away and loving with sensuality and grace.

The secret of Lucibela's extraordinary vocal technique lies in her ability to explore the deep register of Brazil's great sambistas while adding a thrilling vibrato. Written by old masters such as Manuel de Novas and the generation that followed (Jorge Humberto, Betu and so on), the songs from the traditional repertoire that Lucibela champions span decades. Lucibela - like Elida Almeida who wrote two of the tracks - belongs to a new, uninhibited generation. The two young women take guitars, cavaquinho, saxophone, accordion and violin - all the musical cornucopia of the islands - and blend them in the civilizational cocktail shaker of tablet computers and television.

Lucibela projects an intriguing intensity, moving from pure emotion to audacious gambles to firm opposition. Laço Umbilical's arranger and musical director is the ingenious acrobat Toy Vieira, Cesaria Evora's associate, who has also worked with Lura. Lucibela grew up on São Vicente, whose port Mindelo is famous for a number of reasons. The city was home to one of the first high schools in the Portuguese colonies. Amilcar Cabral studied there before he became the father of independence in 1975. Lucibela's mother was a widow with a state pension. Determined that her children would receive a good education, she moved to Mindelo and enrolled them at the school.