Cesaria Evora: Live in Paris (2001)

Singer Cesaria Evora is the cultural ambassador and greatest star of her native country, Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony off the Northwestern coast of Africa. She excels at the highly stylized and emotionally intense ballad style known as the "morna," a melodramatic, mournful romantic music that is much like the Portuguese fado, full of beautiful, melancholy guitars and impassioned lyrics of love lost and life both savored and endured. For those of us unlucky enough to be unable to attend any of her concerts, here is a splendid presentation of Cesaria and her band, recorded live at the Zenith Theatre in Spring of 2001.