Performances by Connecticut Cape Verdean Musicians
PerformerPerformed by
Carlos daGraca
(Cape Verdean)
PerformerPerformed by
Isadore Gomes
PerformerPerformed by
Nicholas Ramalho
(Cape Verdean)
PerformerPerformed by
Manual Ramalho
CompilerCompiled by
Antonia Ignacio Ramalho Sequeira
(Cape Verdean, 1924 - 2005)
Date1996 September 5
Mediumreformatted audio cassette tape
DimensionsDuration: 14 Minutes, 58 Seconds
ClassificationsInformation Artifacts
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
CopyrightIn Copyright
Object number2015.196.580a-c
DescriptionDigitized audio cassette tape containing a compilation of recordings of five mornas performed at the Cape Verdean Association Club in Bridgeport on September 5, 1996. The Connecticut Cape Verdean musicians are: vocalists Carlos da Graça and Julia Lopes; guitar and cavaquinho Nicolau Ramalho, Manual Ramalho, Izadore Gomes. The recording was made by Antonia Sequeira as part of the Cape Verdean Community History project.
NotesSubject Note for Bridgeport Cape Verdean Community: Bridgeport is home to the largest settlement of Cape Verdeans in Connecticut. Drawn to this city by the labor needs of factories such as Bridgeport Brass, Carpenter Steel, Stanley Works, and shirt manufacturers, first men and then their families moved into the area of North Washington, Lexington, and Housatonic Avenue near the old brass works. Known as the Hollow, this section continues as a center where Cape Verdeans live, eat, shop, and attend St. Augustine's Cathedral and school on the corner of Washington and Pequonnock streets. Central High School, with fifty Cape Verdean students, has an active Cape Verdean club under the direction of educator Antoinette Soares Carpenter. Nineteen students in Bridgeport report Krioulo as their home language.Historically, immigrants to Bridgeport were from the island of Sao Nicolau, with a few from Fogo. Now newcomers come from several of the islands. Community leaders established the Cape Verdean Social Club in the early 1940s, taking over the site of Avelino Fernandes' restaurant at 200 North Washington Avenue. Men would gather there, as they do at all the clubs today, to socialize, share music informally, play the card game biska and the board game ouri. Events such as weddings, christenings, wakes, and religious celebrations of saints' feast days brought families to the club. Today the Associaçao de Clube Caboverdiana stands at the corner of Linen and Lexington streets, not far from the Vasco da Gama Portuguese Social Club where joint events are sometimes held.
Excluded from the men's associations, a group of young women from Bridgeport and Stratford, including Antonia Sequeira, formed their own organization in 1944. From the Portuguese Busy Bees they became the Cape Verdean Girls Social Club and then the Cape Verdean Women's Social Club. During the Second World War they sent gifts to men in the service and organized benefit dances and victory celebrations. Education has always been a revered goal of Cape Verdeans. The women's club continues a tradition begun by Bridgeport Cape Verdean Caesar Pina in 1957 of offering about ten scholarships each year to outstanding Cape Verdean high school students planning to attend college. Developed in 1993, the Cape Verdean Cultural Foundation devotes itself to presenting musical events and educational activities.
The Cape Verdean community used to hold a special Thanksgiving Day Mass every year at St. Augustine's Cathedral. Musicians such as violinist Julio Neves and others have played at the service. Priests would come from Roxbury, Massachusetts and sometimes Cape Verde to celebrate mass in both Portuguese and Krioulo. The choir sang religious songs and mornas and afterwards everyone would go to the Bridgeport Cape Verdean Club for breakfast. The parish demographics have changed in the 21st century, and mass is now offered in English, Spanish, and Vietnamese.
Musicians like Francisco “Chico Clau” Ramalho used to play often at Cape Verdean venues around New England and eastern New York, along with musicians such as guitarist Jack Araujo and viola player John Paul who always sang the New Year canta reis greetings. The musicians played for dancing; first a waltz, then a fast polka, then a morna for a rest, then perhaps a slow dance like the mazurca, Antonia's favorite - "You feel the music, you never looked at your feet!"
Antonia's sister, Rose Ramalho Canute, a talented singer, learned Cape Verdean songs while their father Chico Clau played his violin. Starting in her teens, Rose traveled with violinist Julio Neves' band to play at community clubs throughout southern New England. Pioneer producer and distributor Al Lopes, a viola player from New Bedford, Massachusetts, made one of the earliest Cape Verdean-American music recordings, of Rose singing the morna Bissau.
Biographical Note: Antonia Ignacia Ramalho Sequeira was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1924, the daughter of Ignacia (Soares) and Francisco “Chic Clau” Ramalho, immigrants from the Cape Verdean island of Sao Nicolau. Her parents lived first in Warren, Rhode Island, where they worked in the mills, moving to the heart of Bridgeport’s Cape Verdean community on Lexington Avenue shortly before Antonia was born. Antonia spoke only Krioulu until she went to school, after the family settled in Stratford in 1930. The Ramalhos were the first Cape Verdeans in Stratford’s Dewey Street area but others soon followed. Their neighbors Peter and Isabel Fernandes often hosted Cape Verdean sailors who would play music while Isabel sang and taught Antonia and her sisters “all the old songs.” Special family and community occasions such as christenings, as well as impromptu gatherings of friends, would lead to kitchen dances often lasting two or three days, with local families and traveling musicians joining in. Antonia loved the special community feeling of this music and dance, recalling, “People would come over early in the morning and they’d just play music. In the summer we would sweep the dirt and dance in our bare feet.” Antonia’s sister Rose, a talented singer, learned many Cape Verdean songs from her father who played the violin and toured with several bands. Pioneer music producer and distributor Al Lopes from New Bedford made one of the earliest Cape Verdean-American recordings, of Rose singing the morna “Bissau.”
Inspired by her traditional musical family and vibrant Cape Verdean neighborhood, Antonia developed a deep love and knowledge of her culture. She retained detailed memories of people and events, especially those related to music, and was able to record these memories on tape over the years. Always a collector and deeply involved in many organizations and activities, she kept detailed records of the community and its social events. Antonia’s collections of family and historical photographs comprise a rare documentary record of Cape Verdeans in Connecticut during the first half of the 20th century.
Among her numerous organizational affiliations, Antonia was a founding member of the Cape Verdean Women’s Social Club of Bridgeport (established 1944), and served as its president from 1965 to 1967 and again from 1970 to 2002. She spearheaded many projects designed to bring Cape Verdean heritage to public attention. In 1978, Antonia worked with Theresa Cardozo and others from the Women’s Social Club to sponsor a month-long series of lectures, exhibits, and concerts highlighting Cape Verdean culture at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut. She was a member of the Connecticut Friends of the Ernestina/Morrissey, a group responsible for bringing the schooner to Captains Cove in Fairfield in 1983, as a way to educate audiences about Cape Verdean immigration. Antonia, or “Tiny” as she was often called, held memberships and active roles in the Cape Verdean Women’s Scholarship Committee, the Cape Verdean United/Unidade Caboverdeana, the Cesar Pina Scholarship Committee, the St. James Choir, the Cape Verdean Cultural Foundation of Connecticut, and the Red Hat Society. Antonia coordinated regular cultural displays at the Bridgeport Public Library and the annual Thanksgiving Day Mass celebrated by Pio Groton of Boston at St. Augustine’s Church in Bridgeport. She was involved in providing donations to the Thomas Merton Soup Kitchen in Bridgeport and the celebration honoring Francisco Borges, the first Cape Verdean Treasurer for the State of Connecticut.
Alongside her love of Cape Verdeans and their culture, Antonia nurtured her family. She was married to Russell Sequeira and they lived in the same house where she grew up, raising their family of two sons and one daughter. Antonia also worked for many years at Burndy Corporation in Milford.
Antonia’s community showed its appreciation for her unwavering commitment by honoring her in several ways: she was selected as Woman of the Year in 1984 and had her name etched in the State Capitol Building in Hartford. The Cape Verdean Women’s Club held a special dinner dance in her honor in 2003 to mark her years of service to that group, and dedicated the Antonia Sequeira Library, an archive of her collected materials.
Antonia reached out to a wider public in the 1990s with her message of Cape Verdean pride. Representing the Cape Verdean Women’s Social Club, she participated in a new program for urban artists organized by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts and the Institute for Community Research. Her friend and colleague in that program, Joan Neves, was able to travel to Washington, DC in 1995 for the Smithsonian Folklife Festival which that year featured Cape Verdean culture. Inspired by that experience, Joan and Antonia began to plan for a long-term project to document their local community and its history. They found a partner in Lynne Williamson, then Director of the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program, the statewide folk and traditional arts program at the Institute for Community Research. Together the team obtained grants from the Connecticut Humanities Council, the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and the Lila Wallace Readers Digest Fund Community Folklife Program. For three years Antonia, Joan, and Lynne conducted taped interviews with Cape Verdean musicians and tradition bearers across the state, also documenting Cape Verdean neighborhoods, festivals, and activities. Their work resulted in a publication called "Connecticut Cape Verdeans: A Community History" that was distributed to every public library in the state and given to as many Cape Verdeans as possible in the region. The Waterbury Cape Verdean Social Club hosted a concert featuring musicians interviewed during the project, and a panel discussion was held at the Bridgeport Public Library. The materials collected by Antonia and the project team became a valuable archive of Cape Verdean life in Connecticut - information that had never been collected and made available to the public before. Copies are now housed at the Institute for Community Research in Hartford, and the Cape Verdean Women’s Club in Bridgeport.
Antonia’s work on the community history project continues to bear fruit. The book has been used by Cape Verdean organizations in Norwich and other Connecticut cities to educate people about the culture and especially the community’s gift of music. Younger Cape Verdeans in Waterbury, Norwich, and New Haven are coming forward to carry on the oral history work that Antonia believed in so fervently. Antonia passed away on February 28, 2005. She will be remembered as a tireless ambassadress for Cape Verdean culture; as a tradition bearer herself - someone who lived a life of deep Cape Verdean-American identity; and as a woman of grace and love. Her contributions will live on and nourish her people and our world forever. Antonia was posthumously inducted into the Cape Verdean Hall of Fame, in Swansea, Massachusetts.
Biographical Note: Carlos da Graça owned the Madison Portuguese Deli in the heart of the Cape Verdean section of Bridgeport, Connecticut for many years. He trained as a chef on the island of Sal from a young age, then joined family in Bridgeport in 1986. Carlos knows many traditional songs, learned from the regular musical gatherings people would attend often in Cape Verde. He composed five songs on his first CD "Mae," including a coladeira about the village where he was born, and the morna Despedida (Goodbye), with its typically nostalgic lyrics "I leave but I take your flag in my heart." He also produced a CD entitled “Destiny”. Carlos performs at Cape Verdean festivals across New England.
Additional materials exist in the CCHAP archive for 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
1996; 2006