Fantcha is a new voice of hope, of spirit and love, from Cape Verde. But for the last 11 years, she has lived in Park Slope in Brooklyn, where white Manhattanites speculate about real estate and her Dominican neighbors play merengue all day.
“In fact,” she says with a lilt in her voice that sounds vaguely tropical, “I learned Spanish first in the U.S. I had no idea how useful it would be.”
Fantcha plays at 7:30 p.m. at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Summer Solstice Celebration,” a wild two-day festival of performances, music, tarot readings, dance and magic tricks. The MCA is at 220 E. Chicago Ave. Call 312-280-2660 for more detailed information, or go to www.mcachicago.org.
The music that Fantcha has fashioned for herself evokes the sodade — the nostalgia and melancholia — of the best work of her mentor, world pop diva Cesaria Evora. But listen to Fantcha’s new CD, “Criolinha,” and it has a fuller sound, a sometimes rougher beauty, and definitely a more danceable, swaying beat. It’s that balance of bluesy and carefree that gives Fantcha’s music a viable tension, that illustrates the dark and light of her life.
Coming to America and learning Spanish is perhaps the charming paradox. But for Fantcha — the daughter of a single mother who cleaned houses for a living — being here is a cruel necessity.
“That’s one thing about us in Cape Verde — we grow up very poor,” she explains. “Everybody leaves the country looking for a better opportunity. I never finished high school, but I always said I want my kids to go college, I want them to have a better life.”
So, like so many others from Cape Verde — the former Portuguese colony, a breezy island off the northern coast of Africa — Fantcha left her entire family behind, including both her children, to go out into the world and earn enough to provide for them back home.
“I didn’t choose to leave Cape Verde, I didn’t choose to leave my kids,” she says emphatically. “I chose to provide a better life for them.” She sees them about once a year, talks to them on the phone at least once a week. Next year, she hopes her daughter will come and live with her for a while.
For Fantcha, music began early, singing around her family and friends, one of whom was Evora’s daughter. Eventually, Evora asked her to join her and her band at some gigs, helping to give her experience and poise. Since then, the older woman has served as a kind of mentor for Fantcha, although Fantcha quickly points out that that has meant more of a personal and spiritual guidance than anything else.
“Cesaria’s success — people forget — came very late, in France, in the ’90s,” she says.
Fantcha took a slightly different route than Evora, going to Portugal instead to record her first album in 1988. Although she didn’t see much opportunity there, she stayed there until she had a chance to come to the U.S. the following year.
But being black, female, and a foreigner in New York was no piece of cake. Making music seemed the last thing possible. For many years, she worked as a baby-sitter; eventually, Portuguese restaurants began offering her weekend gigs.
“There are lots of artists like me, from all over the world, struggling,” she says. “But you know that if you make it in the U.S., you can make it in any part of the world.”
Then Evora began to have success in France, and later here, slowly but surely raising awareness of Cape Verdean music and opening doors for Cape Verdean artists.
“Once in a while, yes, of course, it goes through your mind that you’re an artist and you have to work seven days a week not on your art — it’s frustrating, yes,” she says. “If your art is not something you really love, then you can give it up. But if you love it, you want to get it out there no matter what it takes. That’s what I told myself all these years.”
Singing during troubled times, she says, is actually an old Cape Verdean tradition. “We don’t think too much of sadness, we live with it, we sing with it,” she says. “What you feel, when you sing, it makes you happy, it makes other people happy.”
And for all the conflicts with her homeland, Fantcha — true daughter of sodade — says that, eventually, she’ll return, for good. “It’s going to take a very long time for me,” she admits wistfully. “But Cape Verde is a paradise. There’s no other country so peaceful, it has a spirit you can’t find anywhere else.”
