Jorge Job's 80th Birthday Celebration
SubjectPortrait of
Djim Job
Cape Verdean-American
SubjectPortrait of
Jorge Job
Cape Verdean, 1928 - 2021
SubjectPortrait of
Albertina Job
Cape Verdean
Date2008 April 8
Mediumborn digital photography
ClassificationsGraphics
Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections
DescriptionPhotographs of Jorge Job's 80th Birthday Celebration held at the Cape Verdean Club in Waterbury, Connecticut on April 5, 2008.
(.1-.2) Jorge and Djim Job performing at Jorge's 80th birthday celebration at the Cape Verdean Club in Waterbury. The other musicians are not identified.
(.3-.4) Pictured on the right are Jorge Job and his wife Albertina at Jorge's 80th birthday celebration at the Cape Verdean Club in Waterbury. The other couple is not identified.
(.1-.2) Jorge and Djim Job performing at Jorge's 80th birthday celebration at the Cape Verdean Club in Waterbury. The other musicians are not identified.
(.3-.4) Pictured on the right are Jorge Job and his wife Albertina at Jorge's 80th birthday celebration at the Cape Verdean Club in Waterbury. The other couple is not identified.
Object number2015.196.548.1-.4
CopyrightIn Copyright
NotesBiographical Note: One of Connecticut's most accomplished Cape Verdean musicians, Jorge Job (1928-2021) was a Cape Verdean guitar and cavaquinho player as well as a composer in Krioulu, the local language of Cape Verde. After emigrating to the United States in 1974 with his family, Jorge lived in Waterbury, where he retired from a lifetime’s work as a cook. Born into a farming family on the island of Sal in 1928, Jorge was a shepherd as a boy. Later, at age 11, he worked in the kitchen of Cape Verde's only international airport, just built at that time on Sal. From the time he was 20, Jorge moved from island to island as a cook and on oil freighters traveling from his island of Sal to the western hemisphere. His morna Shell 15 describes a near disaster suffered by that ship and its crew - including Jorge - when they encountered a hurricane while transporting oil between Cape Verde and Senegal. Music has always been a central part of Jorge's life, an important vehicle of expression for his experiences. He has written sambas for Carnival, parade marches for soccer teams, coladeiras, and nine mornas with lyrics based on actual events in Cape Verde. People on the islands share each others' sorrows, expressing their grief through mornas. Luis Cordero relates a story about two men tuna-fishing from the rocks, a very dangerous activity because of the depth of the sea and the precipitous cliffs. Ano Novo was written about an imprisoned man; his mother cried when Jorge sang it for her at New Year. Morna d'Corral is a bittersweet song about a lost love from Jorge's youth.
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. Away from Cape Verde and deeply emotional experiences, Jorge doesn't write many mornas these days, saying "morna is very sentimental, you have to have inspiration to create it. Now I would go with another type - bolero, coladeira, samba. I'm crazy for samba!"
Biographical Note: Djim Job (Jorge Job Jr.) is a Cape Verdean-American bass player based in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He is also a composer and vocalist with two CDs and collaboration with his brother Rui and his father Jorge on a CD “Geracao.” Djim has a high reputation as a session musician and has played with many highly regarded Cape Verdean musicians – such as Fantcha, Maria de Barros, Bana, and Lucibela – on tours all over the world as well as on disc. Djim is also a producer and arranger of Cape Verdean music. He participated in Year 8 (2005-2006) of the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship program, working with his father Jorge on writing mornas.
Subject Note: 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. 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.
Many Connecticut Cape Verdeans and community organizations remain actively involved in sustaining heritage through regular educational and cultural activities. Wherever they settled, Cape Verdeans formed clubs and associations, a direct maintenance of the island tradition of tabanka. These mutual aid societies in Cape Verde provided essential assistance and services for local inhabitants suffering from constant drought, poverty and colonial neglect. In America early immigrants from the town of Praia on the island of Santiago organized the Holy Name Society in Boston. Men from this group traveled all over New England, especially during the Depression, to distribute clothes, food, or services. Antonia Sequeira remembers them helping her father to dig and plant a garden behind the family's house in Stratford. In the late 1930s and 1940s communities established Cape Verdean social clubs which still flourish, a direct continuation of the tabanka tradition. The concept of assistance for those in need continues in the regular Cape Verdean practice of sending oil drums packed with clothes and other American goods to families in the islands, especially during the frequent drought-related famines.
Separation from their homeland led many Cape Verdean immigrants to compose mornas, songs of great longing and sadness. Mornas remain beloved especially by the older generation who remember the reasons for composing them. Other traditional musical forms such as coladeira, mazurca, and samba are enjoying something of a revival among younger Cape Verdeans, while the African-influenced funana is wildly popular on the contemporary club scene. Playing instruments, singing, dancing, and drumming still happen spontaneously at festivals and social gatherings. Despite the cold of a Connecticut winter, some hardy musicians go door to door in Waterbury, Bridgeport and Stratford, performing canta reis, the traditional New Year serenades. Cape Verdean wakes sometimes feature the choroguiza, a chant lamenting the deceased. The tradition of sending verbal messages via packet boats to families back in the island kept immigrants in touch across the ocean. The popular coladeira Rozinha is a mantenha, a message to Rozinha from her lover working abroad, asking her to wait a year until he can return to marry her. Connecticut musicians such as Jorge Job have been composers of mornas and other Cape Verdean song styles, while the Waterbury community maintain the repicar de tambor, a drumming and dance tradition practiced at the Festa de Sao Joao in June.
The project and the collected archive materials include many examples of locally composed and performed music, along with interviews with musicians and culture bearers and photographs, videos, and other recordings of them.
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 continued to play music at the Cape Verdean Social Club well into his 90s. He passed away in 2021.
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 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.
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