The morna is a music

Music genre

A music genre is a categorical and typological construct that identifies musical sounds as belonging to a particular category and type of music that can be distinguished from other types of music...

 and dance genre from Cape Verde

Cape Verde

The Republic of Cape Verde is an island country, spanning an archipelago of 10 islands located in the central Atlantic Ocean, 570 kilometres off the coast of Western Africa...

.

Lyrics are usually in Cape Verdean Creole, and instrumentation often includes cavaquinho

Cavaquinho

The cavaquinho is a small string instrument of the European guitar family with four wire or gut strings. It is also called machimbo, machim, machete , manchete or marchete, braguinha or braguinho, or cavaco.The most common tuning is D-G-B-D ; other tunings include D-A-B-E...

, clarinet

Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

, accordion

Accordion

The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

, violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

, piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

 and guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

. Morna is often compared to the blues

Blues

Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...

; there is little research on the relationship between the genres, though there are interesting similarities and significant cultural connections between Cape Verde and the United States. Morna is widely considered the national music of Cape Verde, as is the fado

Fado

Fado is a music genre which can be traced to the 1820s in Portugal, but probably with much earlier origins. Fado historian and scholar, Rui Vieira Nery, states that "the only reliable information on the history of Fado was orally transmitted and goes back to the 1820s and 1830s at best...

 for Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

, the tango

Argentine tango

Argentine tango is a musical genre of simple quadruple metre and binary musical form, and the social dance that accompanies it. Its lyrics and music are marked by nostalgia, expressed through melodic instruments including the bandoneon. Originated at the ending of the 19th century in the suburbs of...

 for Argentina

Argentina

Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...

, the rumba

Rumba (dance)

Rumba is a dance term with two quite different meanings.In some contexts, "rumba" is used as shorthand for Afro-Cuban rumba, a group of dances related to the rumba genre of Afro-Cuban music. The most common Afro-Cuban rumba is the guaguancó...

 for Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

, and so on.

The best internationally known morna singer is Cesária Évora

Cesária Évora

Cesária Évora is a Cape Verdean popular singer. Nicknamed the "barefoot diva" for performing without shoes, Évora is perhaps the best internationally known practitioner of "morna."-Early life:...

. 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

As a music genre, the morna is characterized by having a lento tempo

Tempo

In musical terminology, tempo is the speed or pace of a given piece. Tempo is a crucial element of any musical composition, as it can affect the mood and difficulty of a piece.-Measuring tempo:...

, a 2-beat bar

Bar (music)

In musical notation, a bar is a segment of time defined by a given number of beats of a given duration. Typically, a piece consists of several bars of the same length, and in modern musical notation the number of beats in each bar is specified at the beginning of the score by the top number of a...

 (sometimes 4) and in its most traditional form by having an harmonic structure

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

 based on a cycle of fifths, while the lyrics structure is organized by musical strophes that alternate with a refrain

Refrain

A refrain is the line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse; the "chorus" of a song...

. 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.

Harmonic structure

In its most traditional form, the morna obeys to a cycle of fifths. The harmonic progression starts in a chord

Chord (music)

A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...

 (the tonic) of a certain tonality, the second chord is the lower fifth (the subdominant), the third chord is the same as the first and the fourth chord is the upper fifth (the dominant seventh). These chords — tonic, dominant seventh, subdominant — have in Cape Verde the popular names of “primeira”, “segunda” and “terceira” (first, second and third) respectively of the tonality in question. For example, if the music is being performed in a A minor tonality, the A minor chord has the name “primeira de Lá menor” (A minor’s first), the E 7th chord has the name of “segunda de Lá menor” (A minor’s second) and the D minor chord has the name of “terceira de Lá menor” (A minor’s third).

However, this structure corresponds to the most basic and most primary harmonic sequence of the morna. First, this structure has been enriched later with the so-called passing chords (see below under History). Second, this structure is by no means mandatory. Several composers, specially recent composers, employ different chord progressions.

Melodic structure

The melodic line

Melody

A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...

 of the morna varies a lot through the song, with ascending and descending note sequences, and within a bar the notes generally do not have the same length. One frequent characteristic of the morna is the syncopation

Syncopation

In music, syncopation includes a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected in that they deviate from the strict succession of regularly spaced strong and weak but also powerful beats in a meter . These include a stress on a normally unstressed beat or a rest where one would normally be...

, more precisely, one note at the end of a bar is extended to the strong beat

Beat (music)

The beat is the basic unit of time in music, the pulse of the mensural level . In popular use, the beat can refer to a variety of related concepts including: tempo, meter, rhythm and groove...

 of the next bar. The melody is accentuated on the first beat and the last half-beat of the bar.

The melody is structured in verses that in turn are organized in strophes. The main strophes alternate with a refrain strophe, and this alternation can have several models: ABABAB..., ABCBABCB..., ACBACB..., AABCCB..., etc. The melody of the refrain is never the same as the melody of the other strophes.

Themes

The theme of the morna is varied, but there are certain subjects that are approached with more frequency. Besides universal subjects like love, typically Cape Verdean subjects are talked about, such as departure abroad, the return, the saudade

Saudade

Saudade ) is a unique Galician-Portuguese word that has no immediate translation in English. Saudade describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves. It often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never return...

, love for the homeland and the sea. One of the great performers responsible for this thematic was the poet/composer Eugénio Tavares

Eugénio Tavares

Eugénio de Paula Tavares was a Cape Verdean poet. He is known through his famous poems , written in the Crioulo of Brava. His name is honored in the name of the town square in Vila Nova Sintra along with a statue.-Mornas:***...

 who introduced in the beginning of the 20th century the lyricism and the exploration of typical romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 still used today.

Instrumentation

The main instrument associated with the morna is the guitar

Classical guitar

The classical guitar is a 6-stringed plucked string instrument from the family of instruments called chordophones...

, popularly called “violão” in Cape Verde. In its most simple form, a guitar is enough to provide the accompaniment for another solo instrument that can be another guitar, a violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

 (popularly called “rabeca” in Cape Verde), the singer’s voice or any other melodic instrument. The specific way of strum

Strum

In music, a strum or stroke is an action where a single surface touches several strings of a string instrument, such as a guitar, in order to set them all into motion and thereby play a chord...

ming the strings in a guitar is popularly called “mãozada” in Cape Verde. The strumming of the morna articulates a bass (played with the thumb, marking the accentuation of the rhythm) with chords (played with the other fingers, either in an arpeggio

Arpeggio

An arpeggio is a musical technique where notes in a chord are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously...

, rhythmically, or in a combination of both). The morna can also be performed on a piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

, with the left hand providing the bass and the accompaniment and the right hand providing the accompaniment and the melody.

The composition of a morna band is not rigid. A medium-sized band may have, besides the aforementioned guitar, a cavaquinho

Cavaquinho

The cavaquinho is a small string instrument of the European guitar family with four wire or gut strings. It is also called machimbo, machim, machete , manchete or marchete, braguinha or braguinho, or cavaco.The most common tuning is D-G-B-D ; other tunings include D-A-B-E...

(that plays the chords rhythmically), a ten or twelve string guitar

Twelve string guitar

The twelve-string guitar is an acoustic or electric guitar with 12 strings in 6 courses, which produces a richer, more ringing tone than a standard six-string guitar...

 (popularly called “viola” in Cape Verde, that provides an harmonic support), a solo instrument besides the singer’s voice and some percussion instrument. A bigger band may have another guitar, an acoustic bass guitar

Acoustic bass guitar

The acoustic bass guitar is a bass instrument with a hollow wooden body similar to, though usually somewhat larger than a steel-string acoustic guitar...

, more than one solo instrument (violin, clarinet

Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...

, trumpet

Trumpet

The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...

, etc.) and several percussion instruments (shaker

Shaker (percussion)

The word shaker describes a large number of percussive musical instruments used for creating rhythm in music.They are so called because the method of creating sound involves shaking them—moving them back and forth rather than striking them. Most may also be struck for a greater accent on certain...

, güiro

Güiro

The güiro is a Latin-American percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines along the notches to produce a ratchet-like sound. The güiro is commonly used in Latin-American music, and plays a key role...

, bongos

Bongo drum

Bongo or bongos are a Cuban percussion instrument consisting of a pair of single-headed, open-ended drums attached to each other. The drums are of different size: the larger drum is called in Spanish the hembra and the smaller the macho...

, etc.).

From the 1960s, morna began electrification, with the percussion instruments being replaced by a drum kit

Drum kit

A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

 and the bass / accompaniment play performed on the guitar replaced by a bass guitar

Bass guitar

The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

 and an electric guitar

Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a guitar that uses the principle of direct electromagnetic induction to convert vibrations of its metal strings into electric audio signals. The signal generated by an electric guitar is too weak to drive a loudspeaker, so it is amplified before sending it to a loudspeaker...

. In the late 1990s, there was a return to the roots with unplugged (acoustic) performances sought after again.

In its most traditional form, the song starts with an introduction played on the solo instrument (this introduction generally being the same melody as the refrain) and then the song develops in an alternation between the main strophes and the refrain. Approximately after the middle of the song, instead of the sung refrain, the solo instrument performs an improvisation. Recent composers, however, do not always use this sequence.

As a dance

As a dance the morna is a ballroom dance, danced in pairs. The performers dance with an arm embracing the partner, while with the other arm they hold hands. The dancing is made through two body swings to one side in a music’s bar, while in the next bar the swinging is to the other side.

History

The history of the morna can be divided into several periods, not always agreed among scholars:

1st period: the origins

It is not known for sure when and where the morna appeared. The oral tradition gives it for certain that the morna appeared in the Boa Vista Island

Boa Vista, Cape Verde

Boa Vista is the easternmost island of Cape Verde. It is located in the Barlavento group of the archipelago. The island is known for marine turtles and traditional music, as well as its ultramarathon and its sand dunes and beaches...

 in the 18th century, but there are no musicological records to prove this. But when Alves dos Reis says that, during the 19th century, with the invasion of polka

Polka

The polka is a Central European dance and also a genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in Bohemia...

s, mazurka

Mazurka

The mazurka is a Polish folk dance in triple meter, usually at a lively tempo, and with accent on the third or second beat.-History:The folk origins of the mazurek are two other Polish musical forms—the slow machine...

s, galop

Galop

In dance, the galop, named after the fastest running gait of a horse , a shortened version of the original term galoppade, is a lively country dance, introduced in the late 1820s to Parisian society by the Duchesse de Berry and popular in Vienna, Berlin and London...

s, country dances

English Country Dance

English Country Dance is a form of folk dance. It is a social dance form, which has earliest documented instances in the late 16th century. Queen Elizabeth I of England is noted to have been entertained by "Country Dancing," although the relationship of the dances she saw to the surviving dances of...

 and other musical genres in Cape Verde, the morna was not influenced, it suggests that by that time the morna was already a fully formed and mature musical genre.

Even so, some authors trace the origins of the morna back to a musical genre — the lundu

Lundu

The Lundu is a dance-song with its origins in the African Bantu and Portuguese people. It relates to Kilindu, a deity responsible for the fate of each person....

m — that would have been introduced into Cape Verde in the 18th century. There is also a relationship between the morna and another musical genre that existed already in the islands, the choros, which are plaintive songs performed on certain occasions, such as the working songs and wake songs. The morna would be, then, a cross between the choros and the lundum, with a slower tempo and a more complex harmonic structure. Some authors claim that speeding up the tempo of some older songs from Boa Vista or even the song “Força di cretcheu” from Eugénio Tavares, produces something very close to the lundum.

From Boa Vista, this new musical genre would have gradually spread to the other islands. At that time, the morna did not have the romantic thematic that it has today, nor the noble character that it was given later.

Musicologists cite the morna "Brada Maria" as the composition with the longest documented provenance, composed around 1870.

The origin of the word “morna” for this musical genre is uncertain. However, there are three theories, each with its supporters and detractors.

For some, the word comes from English “to mourn”. For others the word comes from French “morne”, the name given to hills in the French Antilles, where the chansons des mornes are sung. But to most of the people the word “morna” would correspond to the feminine of the Portuguese word “morno” (warm) clearly alluding to the sweet and plaintive character of the morna.

2nd period: Eugénio Tavares

In the beginning of the 20th century, the poet Eugénio Tavares

Eugénio Tavares

Eugénio de Paula Tavares was a Cape Verdean poet. He is known through his famous poems , written in the Crioulo of Brava. His name is honored in the name of the town square in Vila Nova Sintra along with a statue.-Mornas:***...

 was one of the main responsibles for giving to the morna the romantic character that it has until today. In the Brava island

Brava, Cape Verde

Brava is an island in Cape Verde. It is the smallest inhabited island, but at the same time the greenest, of Cape Verde, in the Sotavento group. First settled in the 1540s, its population grew after Mount Fogo on neighbouring Fogo erupted in 1675...

 the morna suffered some transformation, acquiring a slower tempo than the Boa Vista morna, the poetry became more lyricised with themes focusing mostly on love and feelings provoked by this same love.

3rd period: B. Leza

In the 1930s and the 1940s, the morna gained special characteristics in São Vicente

São Vicente, Cape Verde

São Vicente , also Son Visent or Son Sent in Cape Verdean Creole, is one of the Barlavento islands of Cape Verde. It is located between the islands of Santo Antão and Santa Luzia, with the Canal de São Vicente separating it from Santo Antão.- Geography :The island is roughly rectangular in shape...

. The Brava style was much appreciated and cultivated in all Cape Verde by that time (there are records about E. Tavares being received in apotheosis in S. Vicente island and even the Barlavento composers wrote in Sotavento Creole

Sotavento Creoles

Sotavento Creoles is the name given to the group of Cape Verdean Creoles spoken in the Sotavento Islands of Cape Verdean Islands.Some characteristics of Sotavento Creoles:...

, probably because the maintenance of the unstressed vowels in Sotavento Creoles gave more musicality). But specific conditions in S. Vicente such as the cosmopolitanism and openness to foreign influences brought some enrichment to the morna.

One of the main people responsible for this enrichment was the composer Francisco Xavier da Cruz (a.k.a. B.Leza) who under Brazilian music influence introduced the so-called passing chord

Passing chord

In music, a passing chord is, "a nondiatonic chord that connects, or passes between, the notes of two diatonic chords." "Any chord that moves between one diatonic chord and another one nearby may be loosely termed a passing chord...

s, popularly known as “meio-tom brasileiro” (Brazilian half-tone) in Cape Verde. Thanks to these passing chords, the harmonic structure of the morna was not restrained to the cycle of fifths, but incorporated other chords that made the smooth transition to the main ones.

As an example, a song in a C major tonality could be enriched in this way:

Basic chord sequence:
C		F		C		G7
Chord sequence with passing chords:
C	C7	F	Fm7♭5	C	A7	Dm	G7

Another example, but in an A minor tonality:

Basic chord sequence:
Am		Dm		Am		E7
Chord sequence with passing chords:
Am	A7	Dm	G7	Am	F	Bm7♭5	E7

Although it looks simple, this introduction has left its deep mark on the morna and passed through later to the coladeira.

Another innovation is that this period slightly coincides with the literary movement Claridade

Claridade

Claridade was a literary review inaugurated in 1936 in the city of Mindelo on the island of São Vicente, Cape Verde. It was part of a movement of cultural, social, and political emancipations of the Capeverdean society...

, and consequently the thematic was widened to include not only themes related to the Romanticism

Romanticism

Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...

 bat also related to the Realism

Realism (arts)

Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...

.

4th period: the 1950s to the 1970s

In this period a new musical genre, the coladeira, reached its maturity and a lot of composers tried this novelty. Therefore, the years from the 1950s to the 1970s did not bring big innovations in musical techniques to the morna.

However, some compositions with a “subtle and sentimental melodic trait” came up, and if movement against the Portuguese colonial policy began, in the morna it is made discretely with the thematic widening to include lyrics praising the homeland or beloved people in the homeland. The lyrics were also inspired by other music (bolero

Bolero

Bolero is a form of slow-tempo Latin music and its associated dance and song. There are Spanish and Cuban forms which are both significant and which have separate origins.The term is also used for some art music...

, samba-canção

Samba-canção

Samba-canção is a kind of slow samba music from Brazil. It appeared in the late 1940s. During the 1950s several stars used to sing it including Dalva de Oliveira, Nora Ney, The Batista Sisters, Jamelão, Maysa, Dorival Caymmi and many others...

, American songs, chanson française, etc.). In the 1970s, there were even political songs.

In the 1960s, electric instruments began to be used and the morna began to be known internationally, either by performances abroad or records production.

5th period: the more recent years

Recent composers take advantage of more artistic freedom to give to the morna unusual characteristics. More recent mornas hardly follow the cycle of fifths scheme, there is a great freedom in chord sequences, the musical strophes do not always have a rigid number of verses, in the melody the reminiscences of the lundum have practically disappeared, and some composers try fusioning the morna with other musical genres.

The Boa Vista morna

The Boa Vista morna is the oldest variant of the morna. It is characterized by having a quicker tempo (andante ± 96 bpm) and a rubato style, and by being structurally simpler. The themes often talk about jokes, satires or social criticism. The melody accentuation is very close to the lundum.

The Brava morna

The Brava morna is in the origin of the most known variety of morna today. Besides having a slower tempo than the Boa Vista morna (lento ± 60 bpm), it has typical Romanticism characteristics, such as the use of rhymes, an accentuated lyricism and a more rigid metre. The Brava style is still practiced by composers from Brava and Fogo.

The São Vicente morna

The São Vicente morna is a derivative of the Brava morna. Both have the same tempo, but in the S. Vicente morna the chord sequences have been enriched with the passing chords. The thematic has also been widened to include not only romantic themes and the poetry is not so rigid. Neither makes use of rhymes like the Brava morna.

Departing from the S. Vicente morna one can witness from more recent and innovative composers to some other morna variants that have not been systemized yet.

Examples of mornas

• “Rabilona”, traditional
  performed by Teté Alhinho in the album “Voz” (Universal Music — 2002)
• “Força di cretcheu”, from Eugénio Tavares
  performed by Celina Pereira in the album “Nôs Tradição” (? — 19??)
• “Eclipse”, from B.Leza
  performed by Chico Serra in the album “Eclipse” (Ed. Sonovox, Lisboa — 1993)
• “Fidju maguadu”, from Jorge Monteiro
  performed by Dany Silva in the album “Lua Vagabunda” (Ed. Valentim de Carvalho, Lisboa — 1986)
• “Biografia d’ um criol’”, from Manuel de Novas
  performed by Os tubarões in the album “Djonsinho Cabral” (Ed. Os Tubarões, Ref. T-003 — 1978)
• “Nha berçu”, from Betú
  performed by Ildo Lobo in the album “Nôs morna” (Ed. Lusáfrica, — 1996)

External links

• The Morna Music Video
• Breves Apontamentos sobre as Formas Musicais existentes em Cabo Verde — In Portuguese
• A Morna — a evolução (breves apontamentos) — In Portuguese
• Música e Cabo-verdianos em Lisboa — In Portuguese
• A dança do landu (dos antigos reinos do Kongo e de Ngola à Boa Vista) — In Portuguese