Southern New England Apprenticeship Program Year 2/3 - Cape Verdean Apprenticeship Showcase
SubjectPortrait of
John Monteiro
(Cape Verdean)
SubjectPortrait of
Eurico Semedo
(Cape Verdean)
Datec. 2000
Mediumslides, positive color film images
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.376.1-.4
DescriptionPhotographs from a required public presentation of the Southern New England Apprenticeship Year 2 or 3 team in Cape Verdean music and dance with teaching artist Joao Cerilo Monteiro and apprentice Raquel Figueiredo and Warm Heart.
2015.196.376.1-.2: Image showing Joao Cerilo Monteiro with gaeta/accordion and Eurico Semedo playing ferrinho.
2015.196.376.3: Image showing Eurico Semedo playing ferrinho.
2015.196.376.4: Image showing Joao Cerilo Monteiro and Eurico Semedo standing near a display of Cape Verdean artwork including a doll made by apprentice Raquel Figueiredo.
NotesSubject Note: The Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program is a CCHAP initiative since 1997 that fosters the sharing of community-based traditional (folk) artistic skills through the apprenticeship learning model of regular, intensive, one-on-one teaching by a skilled mentor artist to a student/apprentice. The program pairs master artists from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, or Connecticut with apprentices from one of the other states, as a way to knit together members of the same community or group across state lines. Teaching and learning traditional arts help to sustain cultural expressions that are central to a community, while also strengthening festivals, arts activities, and events when master/apprentice artists perform or demonstrate results of their cooperative learning to public audiences. The Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program at the Connecticut Historical Society manages the program in collaboration with the Folk Arts Program at the Massachusetts Cultural Council and independent folklorist Winifred Lambrecht who has a deep knowledge of the folk arts landscape of Rhode Island. Primary funding for the program comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, with support also from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Institute for Community Research, and the Connecticut Historical Society.2015.196.376.1-.2: Image showing Joao Cerilo Monteiro with gaeta/accordion and Eurico Semedo playing ferrinho.
2015.196.376.3: Image showing Eurico Semedo playing ferrinho.
2015.196.376.4: Image showing Joao Cerilo Monteiro and Eurico Semedo standing near a display of Cape Verdean artwork including a doll made by apprentice Raquel Figueiredo.
Biographical Note: John Monteiro, stage name Joao Cerilo and also known as “Mr. Po D’Terra,” is a Cape Verdean musician originally from the island of Santiago. He lives and works in Rhode Island, where he has performed both traditional and creative synthesizer-driven versions of Cape Verdean music and dance forms such as funaná, tchabeta, and batuku in clubs and community settings. Joao Cerilo, who plays gaeta, a Cape Verdean accordion, has produced several albums from 1981 to 2015. His performances have taken place at the Working Waterfront Festival in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Accordion Festivals in Texas and New York, Cape Verdean Independence Day at Fox Point, Rhode Island, the Lowell Folk Festival in Massachusetts in 2008, Cape Verdean clubs and restaurants in New England and internationally. He formed a traditional music group known as Pilon Batuku, featuring his cousins Eurico and Jose Semedo playing ferinho, a scraped iron stick that is often heard in Cape Verdean music. Pilon Batuku often included dance performances by New Bedford-based Cape Verdean dancer Maria Rodrigues. CCHAP and colleague Winifred Lambrecht encouraged Joao’s traditional music, recording him and including him in the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program four times, to collaborate and teach Eurico and José Semedo funaná, the Waterbury dance group Warm Heart, and the Norwich dance group Estrellas, from 1998-2001 and 2006-2007.
Biographical Note: After arriving from Sao Vicente in 1989, Raquel Figueiredo formed Waterbury's young dance group Warm Heart, teaching them funana and tchabeta and making new dance outfits. She always loved the colorful celebration of Carnival in Cape Verde, so she started a program at the Cape Verdean Social Club in February 1998 to showcase Carnival costumes and dances. Raquel admired the nature of Cape Verdean culture in Santiago, where island traditions are "homegrown" and less influenced by other cultures. She has been strongly committed to teaching Cape Verdean-American children about their heritage. Raquel also writes poetry and drama focusing on the mid-1980s, a troubled time of intense emigration to America, and she makes traditional Cape Verdean dolls dressed in island costumes. Her dolls were exhibited in CCHAP’s "Hidden Treasures" exhibit at the Office of the Arts Gallery in Hartford in 2001. Raquel participated in the urban Artists Initiative run by the Institute for Community Research and the Connecticut Office of the Arts in 1998-2003. Her dance group Warm Heart performed at several Waterbury festivals, at Cape Verdean events, and participated in the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship program from 1999-2001 to work with musicians Joao Cerilo and Eurico Semedo.
Subject Note for the Waterbury Cape Verdean Community: Waterbury has become a major center of Cape Verdean culture in Connecticut. Numbering around 200 families in the late 1990s, most Cape Verdeans in this area today came from the island of Sao Nicolau, with some from Fogo, Sao Vincente, and Sao Antao. Many more recent immigrants from Cape Verde have moved to Waterbury, making the cultural expressions here very traditional. Early immigrants settled here to work at the Scovill, Chase, and American Brass factories, especially after 1935, when the cranberry industry in Massachusetts diminished. New arrivals work in professional as well as blue collar trades.
Cape Verdeans settled in the Phoenix Street/Abbott Avenue area, very near the brass factories where they worked. More recently they have concentrated on Oak Street, which they joke should be named Sao Nicolau Street. Around 1935, a group of men founded the first social club on Abbott Avenue, moving to Vine Street as they grew. In 1993, officers of the Club purchased the present building at 1181 North Main Street. A full schedule of activities there includes musical Noite Caboverdiana (Cape Verdean nights) with popular bands from New England and Cape Verde; mazurca and funana dance contests; biska card game tournaments; and celebrations of saints' feast days with processions, repicar di tambor (intense drumming and movement) and Cape Verdean foods. These events often serve as fundraisers for families in need. Recently the Cape Verdean ambassador to the United States spent a full day at the club, taking part in a community discussion attended by representatives from Cape Verdean organizations in Bridgeport and Norwich as well.
Waterbury musicians, such as singer Johnny Spinola and bassist Tony Santos traveled and performed with Joe Silva's band throughout New England in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. When he arrived from Sao Antao in the late 1960s, keyboard player Armando Gomes formed a Cape Verdean band called Ultramarine, the name given by the Portuguese to all their colonies. After independence and an influx of new members from the islands the band became Cape Verde '75.
One of Connecticut's most accomplished Cape Verdean musicians, Jorge Job is a Cape Verdean guitar and cavaquinho player as well as a composer in Krioulu, the local language of Cape Verde. Jorge and his son Rui, a professional keyboard player and record producer, have arranged many of Jorge's compositions for their CD "Geracao," published in 2006. Bassist Djim Job (Jorginho), a professional bass player, has collaborated with his father on several musical ventures including composing mornas under the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in 2005-2006. Jorge has continued to play music at the Cape Verdean Social Club well into his 90s.
As in Bridgeport, young Waterbury Cape Verdeans participated in a dance group. In the late 1990s/early 2000s the group Warm Heart performed mazurca, funana, and tchabeta (a very fast rhythm-driven women's dance, part of a batuko performance) under the direction of Raquel Figueiredo. In addition to local performances, the group traveled to Providence, Rhode Island for the annual Cape Verdean Independence Day celebration on July 5. They worked with Rhode Island traditional musician Joao Cerilo Monteiro as part of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program from 1999-2001.
Additional audio, video, and/or photographic materials exist in the archive relating to these artists.
Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.
Status
Not on view
John Monteiro
2005 and 2008
John Monteiro
2005 June 19
Graciela Quiñones-Rodriguez
2004 February 21
