Morna (music)

Morna
Cultural origins	Cape Verde
Typical instruments	Vocals, cavaquinho, clarinet, accordion, violin, piano and guitar.

The morna (pronunciation in both Portuguese and Cape Verdean Creole: [ˈmɔɾnɐ]) is a music and dance genre from Cape Verde.

Lyrics are usually in Cape Verdean Creole, and instrumentation often includes cavaquinho, clarinet, accordion, violin, piano and guitar.

Morna is widely considered the national music of Cape Verde, as is the fado for Portugal, the tango for Argentina, the merengue for Dominican Republic, the rumba for Cuba, and so on.

The best internationally known morna singer was Cesária Évora. Morna and other genres of Cape Verdean music are also played in Cape Verdean migrant communities abroad, especially in New England in the US, Portugal, the Netherlands, France, West Africa and parts of Latin America.

As a music genre, the morna is characterized by having a lento tempo, a 2-beat bar (sometimes 4) and in its most traditional form by having an harmonic structure based on a cycle of fifths, while the lyrics structure is organized by musical strophes that alternate with a refrain. The morna is almost always monotonic, i.e., it is composed in just one tonality. Compositions that use more than one tonality are rare and generally they are cases of passing from a minor to major tonality or vice versa.

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