Genre
Cape Verdean folk. The album moves across the principal musical genres of the Cape Verdean archipelago - funaná, coladeira, morna, and tabanka - in the warm, acoustic-electric ensemble style that made Os Tubarões for two decades musical ambassadors of Cape Verdean to the world. The eleven tracks are sung in Cape Verdean Creole and convey the group's characteristic blend of social engagement and melodic richness.
Release
Released on October 21, 1994, by Lusafrica, the Paris-based label founded in 1990 that has served as the principal international home of Cape Verdean music since its inception, publishing Cesária Évora's defining recordings among many others. Porton d'Nós Ilha was the final studio album released by Os Tubarões before the band's dissolution later that year.
Reception
The album was received as a worthy culmination of the group's twenty-five-year career and as a final document of the classic Os Tubarões sound. It is ranked among the group's finest recordings. The Lusafrica edition has since become sought-after among collectors of Cape Verdean and African music. As a farewell album, it was particularly valued for preserving the voice of Ildo Lobo - the group's defining vocalist - at his most assured and expressive.
Os Tubarões
Os Tubarões -"The Sharks" - were a Cape Verdean folk music group formed in Praia, Santiago, in 1969. A seven-member ensemble comprising professionals - lawyers, doctors, civil servants - who performed music as a parallel vocation, the group became one of the most celebrated and internationally recognised ensembles in the history of Cape Verdean music. Their defining vocalist was Ildo Lobo (November 25, 1953 – October 20, 2004), whose commanding baritone and trademark beret made him the most recognisable face of Cape Verdean popular music for a generation. The group's songs frequently carried political themes aligned with the independence movement and their repertoire encompassed the full range of Cape Verdean musical traditions. Their first album, Pépé Lopi (1976), inaugurated a discography of nine studio albums spanning nearly two decades. Ildo Lobo subsequently launched a solo career, with his first solo album Nôs Morna (1996) produced by Mário Lúcio of Simentera; he died in Praia in 2004, at the age of fifty.
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