Carmen Souza

Press on ‘Port’Inglês’:
‘[Carmen Souza] plays with vocals, scatting, improvisation and always makes her Cape Verdean roots audible in her music. The album captivates with its tonal colours, the special mixture of jazz and traditional Cape Verdean rhythms, but above all with Carmen Souza’s versatile voice.’ SWR Kultur

‘The extremely diverse, sensitively balanced arrangements of her long-standing musical partner Theo Pascal and Carmen Souza’s voice, which gets under your skin, give a remarkable journey of discovery into the past an intensely empathetic topicality.’ Jazzpodium

‘When music is described as “academic”, this is rarely meant as praise. Terms such as ‘constructed’, ‘sober’ and ‘schematic’ resonate too much. However, Carmen Souza proves with her album Port’Inglês just how emotional, joyful and lively music with academic roots can be.’ Jazzthetik

‘Port’Inglês’ […] offers musical narratives about the special culture of the Cape Verdean islands, whose music is characterised by a wide variety of influences. Carmen Souza and her musical partner Theo Pascal have been honing their unmistakable sound for two decades.’ Concerto

‘Souza’s 11th album contains this musical formula, but it is amazingly accomplished, fresh and exciting, as if it were a newfound revelation. Cape Verdean rhythms such as funaná, contradança and morna are just as fundamental to Port’Inglês as jazz is (…).’ Songlines

Press on “Interconnectedness”:
“Whether jazz, rock, pop or folk – her songs always create new hybrids from everything, which she performs spiritedly and with captivating charm.” Deutschlandfunk

“The Portuguese singer Carmen Souza is always on the lookout for new ways of expression. She sings, plays piano and guitar and has a special relationship with the instruments.” SWR 2

“The Cape Verdean singer dedicates her new album to the personal and global changes of recent years.” Jazzthetik

“The basic mood of the album is cheerful and relaxed…” Jazz Podium

“Nothing is reinvented here, but everything sounds fresh and full of surprises.” Folker

“A new sense of vulnerability mingles with a mood of light-heartedness and joy…” Concerto

“…a foundation of folklore, pop and the highest level of musicianship…” Acoustic Guitar

“The incredibly active Cape Verdean Carmen Souza is still committed to jazzifying the musical forms of her archipelago.” Jazz Thing Magazine

“A varied, rhythmic and fascinating disc.” inMusic

“Carmen Souza from Cape Verde and her partner Theo Pascal have created an album beyond all categories in Lisbon” Fono Forum

“11 songs that almost musically wash over you with wonderful melodies, always with this special feeling of life, with great human warmth and a driving yet very smooth rhythm that simply invites you to move, to dance” Hören und Fühlen

“A new sense of vulnerability mingles with a mood of light-heartedness and joy to cast a spell of the familiar and the fascinatingly new over the listener.” Musix Magazine

“Carmen Souza sings mostly in her native Creole language with intimacy, sensuality and vibrancy.” We Got Music

Selected press reviews of the latest album “The Silver Messengers”:

“Souza meanders flexibly between clear melodies and scat caprioles, dances and jumps through octaves, performs surprising, rapid turns.” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“What Souza creates is more than fusion of two worlds, it’s simply beautiful music.” Songlines

“The acclaimed composer, singer and instrumentalist manages to give Silver’s work a new voice in order to preserve his legacy for a whole new generation (especially in the homeland of her ancestors)” Jazz Fun

“With her last album >the silver messenger< in 2019, singer and guitarist Carmen Souza (…) came closer to jazz than ever before in her homage to Horace Silver.” Jazz Podium

“Without a doubt, Carmen Souza has become one of the most important world music artists and one of the most sought-after jazz singers.” Hotjazzclub

‘Port’Inglês’ is the name of Carmen Souza’s 11th Album to be released in the spring of 2024 by Galileo Music. Port’Inglês’ (English port) is a musical tale of two Islands. The untold stories of the British occupation in Cabo Verde sang in the very unique style of Carmen Souza. Cabo Verde and Jazz have never been so close. After living in the UK for the last 15 years, Souza uses her music to deepen the unexpected connections between her motherland Cape Verde and the United Kingdom, the country that has fed her creativity for so long. This new collection of 8 songs was composed as a musical suite and is routed even more in the spirit of the Islands. The music and the lyrics re-tell the stories behind the encounter of these 2 different cultures and its impact in Cape Verde after centuries of English presence. Carmen Souza says “I took the tales told in Cape Verde as a starting point to create this musical suite. Throughout the research I did for my master’s thesis, I attempted to inhabit this historical period through music. The album touches on themes of cultural identity, resistance, and colonialism to highlight the connection between Cape Verde and the UK and address its ongoing struggle for decolonisation. Inspiration came from popular tales, tales of the sea even Sea Shantis from British Folk.”

The instrumentation fuses Lusophone influences not only in the use of traditional instruments but also in the structures, rhythms, and tone of the songs. Improvisation further blurs the boundaries between culturally specific kinds of music.  Carmen Souza’s voice shows a variety of textured registers that explore the subtleties of her expressional range. In the sound, there’s a directness and clarity that gives each song a sense of “liveness”. MA Creative Producer and composer – Theo Pascal says: “It was a priority to allow the acoustic ‘colours’ of each instrument to be realised organically without the need for extensive digital processing or effects. The use of analogue and other digital recording techniques reflects the historical nature of the stories told here”.

The music of Cape Verde is, like the peoples who inhabit the island itself, of mixed or hybrid cultural descent. Souza and Pascal’s acclaimed sound signature of blending Jazz with more traditional music/Rhythms like Funana, Contradança or Morna once again reflects the multi-layered hybridity of Cape Verde itself.