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Southern New England Apprentice Program Year 2 Performances - João Cerilo Monteiro, Raquel Figueiredo, & Warm Heart, 2002

PerformerPerformed by John Monteiro (Cape Verdean)

PerformerPerformed by Raquel Figueiredo (Cape Verdean)

PerformerPerformed by Warm Heart

Date2000 June 18

Mediumreformatted digital file from VHS tape

DimensionsDuration: 1 Hours, 52 Minutes, 16 Seconds

ClassificationsGraphics

Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections

CopyrightIn Copyright

Object number2015.196.589a-b

DescriptionReformatted digital file from a VHS tape containing a video recording of Southern New England Apprentice Program Year 2 performances by João Cerilo Monteiro and Warm Heart with Raquel Figueiredo on June 1, 2000. The tape was compiled by Raquel Figueiredo. These events were required public presentations of the apprenticeship team in Cape Verdean funana and batuku dance. Teaching artist John Monteiro with apprentice Raquel Figueiredo and Warm Heart dance group.

A note with the tape reads:
1. Warm Heart dancers performing at a banquet, then African dancers, then Warm Heart.
2. Warm Heart at the Cape Verdean Club in Waterbury with João Cerilo in June 2000.
3. Raquel's personal material

NotesSubject Note: Tape compiled by Raquel Figueiredo of Warm Heart Cape Verdean Dance Group of various performances by the group and other Cape Verdean events in Rhode island and Connecticut.

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.

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.

Subject 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.

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