Cesaria fans owe the genesis of the album Radio Mindelo to Gustavo Albuquerque, a former sound engineer at Radio Barlavento. Albuquerque happened to be reminiscing about the good old days of the Cape Verdean radio station when he remembered that Cesaria had made a series of recordings for Barlavento at the start of the '60s. Albuquerque immediately got on the phone to the singer's producer, José Da Silva, and informed him of the whereabouts of the tapes, which he claimed had been stashed away at the back of a cupboard and forgotten. One can imagine the shock - and the buzz of excitement - that suddenly animated Da Silva on the other end of the line! This was nothing short of a miracle! Now, he could finally document the barefoot diva's first tentative steps and share proof of Cize's early years with fans. In the sleeve notes to Radio Mindelo, Da Silva enthuses about having fans "discover the voice of Cesaria's youth, a voice in which you will recognise the same phrasing, the same intonations and the same serenity it has today - and which are just some of the reasons behind her extraordinary success."

Evora's languid vocals on Radio Mindelo certainly bear premonitory signs of the lively but laidback celebrity she will become thirty-five years later. (A celebrity, incidentally, who has collected a whole string of prestigious awards and lined up gold, diamond and platinum discs on her mantelpiece). The twenty-two tracks Cesaria recorded between 1959 and 1961 at Radio Barlavento and Radio Clube (both private stations with very basic studios) are certainly proof of her precocious talent. "Cize" was just twenty at the time, but she had already spent over five years performing in the local bars of Mindelo. Even as a teenager she sang with an easy confidence and her assured, 'lived-in' voice shines through on these early recordings, despite the rudimentary nature of the studio takes and the fact that the tapes have not been  kept in the best conditions. Cesaria's voice has less of that famous huskiness on these old recordings, but between the lines you can still catch that almost supernatural quality, that lingering sense of melancholy that became the barefoot diva's signature style. Crooning ballads of heartfelt loss and homesickness, she delves deep into Cape Verdean history, capturing the emotions of her island ancestors exiled on the 'confetti' archipelago of the old Portuguese empire.  

A year before "Cize" went into the radio studios, Cape Verde's seminal morna composer B.Leza had died destitute. The young Cesaria draws on a number of songs from the late composer's repertoire, but she also performs compositions by Morgadinho and the virtuoso guitarist Gregorio Gonçalves, better known as "Ti Goy" (who also features on the tapes saved by miracle from the archives). "Gustavo, who was working at Radio Barlavento at the time, asked me whether I'd like to record with Ti Goy, Caraca and a bunch of other musicians whose names I've forgotten now," Cesaria recalled in a 2008 interview, "I said 'OK, go ahead and organise things with Ti Goy!' Ti Goy told me he'd be delighted if I'd go round to his place so he could run through his music with me and teach me his songs… After that, we became inseparable!" Young "Cize" became Ti Goy's 'protégée' and the pair made a name for themselves entertaining rich Portuguese tourists who moored their yachts off Cape Verde. Ti Goy encouraged "Cize" to experiment with coladeiras (of which he happened to be one of the finest composers). Coladeiras, in a much more lively, upbeat vein than traditional mornas, revolve around wild, carnival-style guitars and were very much in vogue at the time.

The coladeiras are one of the most pleasant surprises on Radio Mindelo, another of these being the high quality of the editorial and photography work in the accompanying booklet (worthy of the best Anglo-Saxon productions). The Cesaria we discover on Radio Mindelo is presented in more of a joyous, carefree light than we usually know her, even though the lyrics of the songs on the album are shot through with heartbreak and the day-to-day sufferings of her compatriots. Fans will be particularly intrigued by one of the anecdotes in the booklet in which Cesaria reveals the origins of her famous 'sobriquet', the "Barefoot Diva". It appears that the singer simply kicked off her shoes at a concert one night to make herself feel more comfortable. Her shoe-less nickname was, in fact, nothing to do with the years of abject poverty the singer endured once her protectors left for Lisbon and her first hour of fame came to an abrupt end in the mid-'60s.

By the time Cesaria made her comeback decades later, Cape Verde had won  independence and a series of musical fads had come and gone, threatening to consign the barefoot diva to oblivion. Cesaria strode back into the recording studio in 1984, after a life-changing encounter with José Da Silva and the rest is history. The legend was reborn and, in the process, the barefoot diva put her "petit pays" ("little country") on the international map, celebrating the "ten little grains lost in the Atlantic Ocean." Those "ten little grains" are now fully explored in a new book by Véronique Mortaigne and Pierre René-Worms. Cesaria Evora & le Cap-Vert delves into the rich and varied history of the Creole archipelago with sensual-voiced Cesaria as an omnipresent guide.