Divas Deluxe

American music listeners, typically a xenophobic lot, are occasionally smitten by the voice of a foreign singer. We fell for Germany’s Marlene Dietrich in the 1920s, France’s Edith Piaf in the ‘40s, and Brazil’s Astrud Gilberto in the ‘60s. As the century closes, we’re overdue for a new global diva—and two promising candidates from different parts of the world are poised to make a breakthrough.

Cesaria Evora, from the Portuguese-speaking West African island nation of Cape Verde, has become known as “the barefoot diva” for her propensity to perform shoeless, in solidarity with the disadvantaged women and children of her country. It would be easy to dismiss this trademark as an affectation, but when Evora, begins to sing, there’s no doubting her sincerity. Her voice, low and burnished with experience, seems to carry the very weight of the world.

Evora, essentially unknown before 1995, now fills halls in London, Paris, Tokyo, and Chicago, and she was nominated for a Grammy last year after a long stay on the world-music charts. She’s frequently compared to Piaf and Billie Holiday, but her world-weary alto has a character entirely its own. Though it’s easy to imagine Evora as a jazz singer, á la Holiday, she draws her entire repertoire from Cape Verdean songwriters and remains steadfastly within the idiom of the morna, a regional, relentlessly melancholy music form. “I don’t think I’ll ever leave my roots,” she has said. “It’s in my blood, it’s in my veins.”

This is a singer with a vivid sense of place. She named her new album simply Cabo Verde, and its final track, “Ess Pai,” is the most gorgeous tourist jingle a country could ever have. After praising Cape Verde’s poets and people, she sings, “We have no riches . . . but we have a godly peace.” Listening to the evocative melodies on this album—imagine a slow samba, played on a balmy night near the sea—it’s easy to believe that claim.