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from the island São Tomé, where a similar musical form exists. All these theories are based on oral tradition; there are no musical docu- ments to prove any of them.
Funaná legend and accordeon player Victor Tavares, better known as Bitori, has been playing funaná since the early 1950s. He was born in the capital Praia and in 1954 embarked for the former Portuguese colony São Tomé & Principe in the Gulf of Guinea (off the north-western coast of Gabon).
“In those days I was already playing a little bit on the accordeon but I dreamed about owning my own instrument,” he remembers. “That’s why I went to São Tomé because it was easy to find work over there. I worked for about three years and four months as a ser- vant on a farm. One of my tasks was to take care of the horse of the boss. One day the horse ran away and my boss blamed me for that. The next day at seven o’clock in the morning he woke me up and beat me like hell. In those days a kind of slavery still existed. Anyway, I saved enough to buy my first accordeon in São Tomé and then I went back to Cape Verde. Once back home on the island of Santiago I set about learning the intricacies of playing it. You can imagine how proud I was having my own accordeon.”
parties. We were allowed to play funaná during the day but it was forbidden after nine pm. If the Portuguese caught you playing after this time, they sent you straight to prison.”
S
“The only style I was playing was funaná which is actually music from the slaves. For us it was party music in which we could forget our sadness and our past. That’s why funaná has a melancholy under- tone. But I don’t want to talk too much about the relation between slavery and funaná. I prefer talking about the happy feelings of funaná. In the past the floors of the houses in Cape Verde were cov- ered with sand. When the Cape Verdeans had a party and everybody was dancing, the whole room was filled with blown-up clouds of sand. That’s what funaná was all about, at least in the old days.”
Bitori’s fame was restricted to local parties for the Cape Verdeans.
Up until the mid-’70s the most popular Cabo Verde styles weremornas and coladeras but Cape Verdean independence in 1975 marked the beginning of a musical revolution. The newly-won freedom stimulat- ed young, creative musicians to embrace their African roots.
One of them was Carlos Alberto ‘Katchas’ Martins, founder of the legendary band Bulimundo, who blended such formerly forbid- den rhythms as batuco and funaná with electric instruments. Katchas inspired young Cape Verdean musicians in Lisbon, Paris and the Dutch harbour town Rotterdam, where a huge Cape Verdean community has settled. Rural musical styles, until 1975 ignored by people in the towns, became popular. Katchas and other young musicians brought funaná from the country side to the cities. The idea of reviving African music was a political statement because until independence every- thing African was derided by the upper classes. The 1980s saw the spread of funaná within Cape Verde; the 1990s was the decade of internationalisation. Finaçon, born from a split in Bulimundo, was the most well-known Cape Verdean band outside the archipelago.
Bitori and his band
elf-taught, Bitori developed his own, infectious raucous style that quickly became popular among the older gen- eration on Santiago Island. “For many years funaná was banned but later on there was more tolerance and I could play everywhere where they invited me, mostly at
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