Carmen Souza

Carmen Souza
Carmen Souza, 2014
Background information
Born	(1981-05-20) May 20, 1981 (age 36)
Origin	Lisbon, Portugal
Genres	Jazz
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter, Piano & Guitar player
Instruments	Singer
Years active	1999–present
Website	www.carmensouza.com

Carmen Souza (born 1981) is a Portuguese-born jazz singer and songwriter of Cape Verdean heritage. She has won wide acclaim for her innovative style which is a Jazz fusion of Cape Verdean traditional forms with contemporary and traditional jazz elements. In 2013, she was honored at the Cape Verde Music Awards with best morna and best female vocalist.

Carmen Souza was born in Lisbon on 20 May 1981, to parents who had moved to Portugal after the Carnation Revolution ended the colonial era of their native Cape Verde. Though Souza has only been to Cape Verde herself a few times, once on a family trip when she was ten and again as an adult in 2010, she grew up speaking Creole and eating Cape Verdean cuisine. While still a child, she began singing gospel music in the church choir. Her parents maintained close ties with the diaspora, and Souza's childhood was filled with the music and culture of Cape Verde, along with that of the former Portuguese colonies of Angola, Brazil, Mozambique and São Tomé. Souza's father, Antonio, a merchant sailor, insisted she should learn English and German. After spending just one year at college, she left to pursue her music career.

In 1999, Souza began partnering with bassist Theo Pas'cal, who has been a mentor to her and continues to perform with her. They met when she came to audition for a music project Pas'cal was directing and initially she performed professionally with him in a Portuguese-language gospel choir. Souza plays piano and guitar, writes or co-writes her songs with Pas'cal and sings. In 2003 they began working on a style which combined Cape Verde Creole music, including the batuque, coladeira, and morna genres, with contemporary jazz. Souza usually sings in Creole because its variants allow her a flexibility for the language to meld with different cadences, than more formal languages allow. But she also sings in English, French, and Portuguese. Her voice is "alternately chirpy and grave."Africa Today described her as having a "soul diva voice". Souza's work transforms the traditional Cape Verde morna, adding jazz and personal invention, such as vocal experiments, using her pitch and tone to emulate musical instruments.