Celina Pereira
Singer and storyteller
Celina Pereira is natural from the island of Boa Vista, Cabo Verde, having followed her family to the island of San Vicente when she was only six years old.
Ever since worried about the questions of the preservation of the collective memory and, therefore, about the own identity of the people from Cabo Verde, Celina Pereira has accomplished, since her first long play album, Força di Cretcheu, recorded in Lisbon in 1986, the adventure of trying to recuperate what of most precious has the soul of her people, through what constitutes the real richness and diversity of its musical culture.
Through researches and gathering realized in Cabo Verde and in the Capeverdean diaspora, spread over the seven parties of the world, Celina Pereira presents, in a luxury repertoire, themes that are the ground for fixing the memory of the popular traditions. She recovers mazurkas, wedding songs and mornas, round songs, lunduns, chorus, rigmaroles and rural tunes : all of them making part of the richer oral traditions, still waiting for a continuous registration in order to preserve the very rich cultural patrimony of the Republic of Cabo Verde. With this ceaseless and systematic work, Celina Pereira has made possible the safeguard of themes which were about to irrecoverable misleading.
In the international festivals of music, namely in Europe, integrated in the “world music” by her repertoire and vocal and interpretative qualities, her name appears matching frequently with very renown artists as Youssou N’Dour, Célia Cruz, Olodum, Daniela Mercury, Chico César, Carlinhos Brown, Martinho da Vila, Gilberto Gil, Manu di Bango, Rokia Traoré, Inez Mettzel, Grupo Tartit, Al Jarreau, Bob Mc Feryn, Nina Simone, Manhattan Transfer.
As a multifaceted artist, Celina Pereira has also developed a permanent activity in several areas of communication, namely as radio journalist and storyteller, activity she has initiated in high schools and elementary schools in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, since 1990.
Living in Portugal, Celina Pereira participated to the MUS-E programme in Lisbon.
Recently, by the occasion of the commemorations of the 30rd Anniversary of the Independence of the Republic of Cabo Verde, in November 2005, she was rewarded by the President of the Portuguese Republic with the Medal of Merit of the country.
