Viva la diva?

>> They call Cesaria Evora "the Barefoot Diva," but does she fit that weighty bill?

by CHRIS YURKIW

What is a diva? A performing artist who's got equal and hefty measures of both talent and temperament? An opera singer who, while riding in a limo, will phone the chauffeur rather than talk to him directly? A woman, necessarily? Do we use the term a little too loosely? I mean, Celine Dion gets called a "diva," but you don't get the impression she's chewing out wardrobe people after a billion folks have seen, through a diaphanous dress at the Oscars, that she wears parachute-size panties. Celine might have the requisite vocal chops, but she's too damned earnest for divadom.

So what to make of Cesaria Evora, who came into our lives a few years ago singing a Portugo-Brazilian version of the blues that was cooked up somewhere between the 10 poor islands that make up her native and still home of Cape Verde, a bunch of brown rocks off the coast of Senegal which the Portuguese colonialists insisted on calling "Cape Green"? When Evora arrived in Montreal for the first time to play the Jazz Festival it was easy to translate, or not, the tag that France had given her (in return, perhaps, for launching her international career): "La diva aux pieds nus." But was this yet another neo-colonialist misnomer? Was "diva" being read too literally? Maybe not...

"Well, the 'diva' part I don't know about," says Cesaria through her manager-translator, "but 'barefoot' it's true, because I'm a barefoot person. I'm always without shoes--all my life I've been like that. For my first record in France they put the title La diva aux pieds nus--The Barefoot Diva. That's how it all started. I don't see myself as a diva, put the people are saying that! I wasn't the one who started that."

Now, diva status is not something that most real divas will fess up to (it's not entirely becoming), so Evora's open-ended answer is curious. Should I wonder about the quick 12 minutes allotted for our interview, which only took place after much wrangling and an actual dropping of the d-word by one of the publicists? Or should I think back to those times I've seen Evora on stage--utterly at home even as her bare feet step on cables, smoking a cigarette whenever she can, sitting down on a chair and looking a bit bored when her band goes into an instrumental break?

On the cover of her latest album, Cafe Atlantico, Evora laughs as she, queen of the bar, is surrounded by a court of comely men. But when it comes down to the music (and lyrics), it's evident that Cesaria the soulful mezzo takes a back seat to her beloved Cape Verde: her talent seems merely a servant of the story and plight of her compatriots.

"Well, I don't know," says Cesaria, pushed one last time. "People call me [a diva] and I just accept what they call me. I can't really talk about that."

At Theatre Olympia this Saturday, October 9, 8pm, $28-35