Carmen Souza

TRANSCRIPT

So, my name is Carmen Sousa. I was born in Lisbon. I grew up here. I lived here until my early '20s and then that's when I decided I wanted to do music.

And also that's when I met Theo Pascal, who is my producer. From there we moved into the UK and I've been living in London. And now I'm in Lisbon again because we have a recording studio here. So I guess the roots keep pulling you at some point.

I do feel Cape Verdean, I do feel Portuguese, but if I go to Cape Verde, they will ask "were you born here?" and I'll say "no, I was born in Lisbon, also you're Portuguese" but in Portugal they will ask me immediately "where are you from, Angola or Cape Verde?" Well, my parents, they were from Cape Verde, but I was born here in Lisbon. I guess it was something that I always grew up with but I feel that I'm a little bit from London as well.

In London, you know, nobody really notices you. It's really just... it's one of those places that, you know, there's Britain and then there's London. In London, you're always a Londoner. But you're not British, but you're a Londoner.

Yeah, different cultures, you know, especially with food, the Portuguese – and I didn't know this before I started traveling. You go to France, you go to Italy, and you find different tastes and you discover different things. It's really interesting. Here in Portugal, now there's a lot more, there's sushi, there's pizza, there's a lot of things. But I don't know, they still try to make pizza or sushi with a Portuguese twist, You know what I mean? So I guess there's always a way to “Portugalize” the food that comes from the outside.

But you know, in Portugal, they always had a little bit of difficulties, understanding difference. Why do you have to dress like that? Why do you have to wear your hair like that? Why is your skin color like that? It's really difficult. So they need to “Portugalize” your identity, as well. “Portugalizing.” I'm making up words now. Why not?

But I don't know, maybe there's a citizenship police that will say: “No, you're from here, from there,” But you know, you feel as you feel and your music will be what it will be.

Music has no borders, that's the best thing of it, because you can cross them whenever you like, and they're no police.

My mother... I always talk more about my mother, because my father, he was traveling. He worked for several months at sea and he would come back for short periods and then go again. And so basically she was mom and dad at the same time.

So Mamam is a song that I wrote after my mother passed away in 2018, and that was like a big loss for me. So this song was really, I guess, expressing that grief of losing her and how things kind of – even the color of things and the daily life – changed after she passed away.

So my mom arrived in '72 before the Carnation Revolution. And so, when they came they were able to come from Cape Verde as Portuguese citizens. That was a big thing because that would guarantee that you would not be thrown out at any point. And after that moment that rule changed. My father, I think he had already been to Lisbon on and off, because he worked in cargo ships. They were really striving to, you know, get better conditions. And once they became a family, and I came up, they were really like, yeah, we need to create conditions and security for this child, and for her to have a better life.

That's what they told me. But also that, you know, there was a lot of prejudice, and they were treated differently because they came from the ex-colonies, and there was a sort of minimizing – always minimizing – attitude towards any person that would come either from Cape Verde or Angola or Mozambique. And she would say, "You know, be careful because people will treat you this way," but also she wanted me to be resilient and to fight for the things that I believed in.

When I was growing up, I remember my mother saying that parents were very strict, not even speaking Creole in the house, being afraid of the child having like an accent when they spoke the Portuguese, and that would make them seem like they were dumb in school. It's so sad to see this because it's the identity of a person. Why would we want to erase the identity of a person? So that's why probably my mother she spoke to me in Creole, but when I responded to her in Portuguese it was fine, because she wanted me to speak the proper Portuguese. That didn't save me from any bullying anyway... but at least I speak the Portuguese. What is “proper Portuguese?”

Yeah, bullying was bad while growing up, because, I was the only black person in school. So you're always, you know, you're always the focal point because you're different. Kids would be mean and they would pull my hair and they would call me names and everything. But because of the Christian education that I had at home, I was like, “But wait a minute. This is not what I'm taught on Sunday school, you know?” And sometimes there was like physical violence, and I couldn't raise my hands against them. And I would tell my mom and she would say, “No, you have to fight back. You need to leave all those things that you put in your mind.” And it was really hard for me to understand this, you know? “If we're all Christian, why are we hitting each other? You know, why do kids need to be so mean?” And she would tell me, “Yeah, well, you know, you have a different skin tone, so they're always going to pick on you because they're not educated. They are what they are. You need to fight back.” So it was kind of bad, but, you know, I don't have any resentments because that was the way the kids they were brought up. They were like that because their parents were like that. And so it's a vicious circle, you know? If we teach hate to our children, they will they will be haters.

Well, the song Origem. I actually caught my dad playing the guitar, because he used to play the guitar back into the day, and he would be showing me all these mornas and telling stories in the middle about the Cape Verdeans and the lifestyle. And I recorded it with a Zoom, because I wanted to have that. It was kind of part of my childhood. And he was telling me about the origin of this morna, which is called 6 on na Tarrafal, which a friend of his composed.

So, it's very, very interesting that I ended up singing in Creole. Growing up, my whole Saturday afternoon, I would listen to American Top 40. There was something about that music, the instrumentation that was very different, and also the sound of it, and the language. because I really love languages. That was how I learned English – transcribing what I could hear. And then on Sundays I would go to church and sing church music.

There was, as always with teenagers, some resistance, for me, to the music of Cape Verde. And also because I kind of grew up in an environment where there were Cape Verdeans around me but not in my school and, you know, to listen to that was kind of “That's old people music, you know,” And you kind of label it but you never really hear it with attention and say, “Wait, wait a minute. What are you saying? This is this is richness right here.”

The last year I was making a Master's in Ethno-musicology, and I'm interested in all this diversity of the Lusophone music. All these countries that were colonized by the Portuguese, it's called Lusofnia, the Lusophone culture, because we all speak the Portuguese. The problem that these diaspora countries, Cape Verde or Angola, have with constructing an identity was we were told for so many years that that was like maybe not a sign of evolution, and it was always like put down, you know?

And so growing up, if you're listening to this with that idea, well, that's not really music that is very developed. It was frowned upon, and people would make jokes out of it. “Oh, that's like...,” you know?

And so I found my way back to Cape Verde Music because I started to write lyrics. And for some reason I couldn't write it in English, I couldn't write it in Portuguese, and the Creole was the one that that sounded better to me. Because the Creole – the dialect – you have several variations. And this was almost like another instrument for me to play with and have fun with. And so, you know, I started to write all my lyrics in Creole.

I think that there are many lessons in life that we can totally transposed to music, and there are a lot of lessons in music you can transpose to life. Well, at least it has been that way for me. Music kind of demands a little bit of the musician. It demands attention. It wants attention. And if you leave it like for a couple of days, a couple of weeks... it will catch you later. You know what I mean? Because it's this constant connection that you have to have with it. And the same you need to have with life. If you're connected to yourself, to your purpose, to what you want to do, you really have to be certain of what you are doing. And there's a lot of discipline and focus that goes into being a musician – or just being a normal person, you know – that self-control that you need to have. That delivery that you need to give to people every day when you go on stage. Sometimes you may be reinventing yourself. That's a part of jazz music where you try, at least try, to reinvent yourself every night. But what you really want is to be the best of yourself as you can be, the best person that you can be. So this is a guide to life, you know?

So we are all connected, and we're coming from the past into the present, into the future. and we just are, you know? It just is like this word – very used these days – but this “awareness” of just being present, you know? Knowing that you're not alone. There's a lot of people around you. There has been a lot of people before you. There will be a lot of people after you. But what matters is, what we do as an ensemble, and if we can make something good, you know? If we are able to communicate to a point where we're just aware of each other and we just are at that state.

So, I guess that music can be an agent in that part where it brings people together – because again, it's borderless. And we can all speak very eloquently, but I guess music can be the most eloquent form of bringing people together because you don't need words, you just need to shut your eyes, and your mouth, and feel, you know, and I guess that's the practical guide again to life.

This is such a big discussion, because I wouldn't say it's hard for me to understand, because for me, now, the person that I am, traveling the whole world, and having seen so many things, I can understand why identity can be so many things – and it's good for it to be many things.

People want the identity of a person to be “this” – “You have to be Portuguese, you have to be American, you have to be French” – but it can be so many things, and that's who we are. And even in these days, it becomes much more difficult to say that a person is “this thing,” because we're traveling more than ever before. And all the countries, you know, we're in so much about immigration, but even for a person that doesn't leave Portugal – or doesn't leave wherever you are – you have access to so many different cultures – even when you are at home. You can see that, “Oh, you know, this person speaks like this, or I understand that, you know, he's speaking a different language because he must be from Asia, or....”

We didn't used to have this ability, and this knowledge, and this discernment. And I don't think it's a big problem for the identity to be many things, because I guess, we can make it work. I've been trying to.... I hope.