Tabanka Records is a project founded by Mama Demba (River Ramos) and Henrique Silva. Originally conceived as a vinyl record shop, it quickly evolved into a platform for music production, creation and artist promotion, acting as a bridge between the past and present of African music, with a strong focus on Lusophone cultures, particularly the Cabo Verdean one. Its portfolio includes projects such as Acácia Maior, Mama Demba, Landa, Rally Fantasia, and ArapucaGongon, alongside an extensive collection of records from the 1970s to the 1990s, which serve as constant sources of inspiration for new creations and collaborations.
Here, Tabanka Records co-founder Henrique Silva gives us a primer on the many styles of Cabo Verdean music.
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Let’s start at the beginning: what and who exactly is Tabanka Records?
Tabanka Records is a project founded by me, Henrique Silva, and my good friend River, also known as DJ Mama Demba. He’s been collecting music for over 20 years, so he has a big collection of vinyl from Cabo Verde, from Angola, from Guinea… We met in 2018, here in Lisbon, where I live. We are both from Mindelo, a city on the São Vicente Island in Cabo Verde. He’s like 13 years older than me, so we never crossed paths back then.
In 2018, Mama Demba came to me and said, “I want to open a vinyl store called Tabanka Records. But I also want to put out music. A label and a vinyl shop.” We started the project, and I started producing songs. Some songs became material for Acácia Maior, some were used for Landa, some for ArapucaGongon. These are new projects we formed under the Tabanka umbrella.
I love how digging culture is at the core of this whole operation: unearthing things, reassembling them, reinterpreting them and giving them a new life. It makes sense that Tabanka started with a vinyl store.
Exactly. And me, as a musician, an instrumentalist and producer, I like to understand how things were done. How musicians used to play. Take morna recordings from the 60s and 70s – it’s amazing how they played on those. That’s how I learned about my culture. There’s a lot of albums that have been made in Cabo Verde since the 60s that are kind of lost, you know. At the time they did small runs, like 20, 30 copies. But our families, our fathers, grandfathers, they had these records at home. Somehow this old music has reached us and now we deliver it back...
What was your musical socialization like? How was your musical upbringing?
In São Vicente we don’t have music schools. Cabo Verde has only a few music schools, and they’re really small. And yet, all of Cabo Verde is full of music and musicians.
I learned music by myself. In the beginning of YouTube, I watched rock videos, Jimi Hendrix, but also new stuff... I was in Cabo Verde, dreaming of all the rock music out there. But at the same time, my father played instruments, and he was friends with plenty musicians, who played with the biggest names from Cabo Verde.
Which instruments did he play?
My father played flute and guitar. His friends played with Cesária Évora, for example. On the weekends, when we took a trip or visited a football match, they were coming along, playing viola, guitar, cavaquinho... Sometimes in our living room. I was like, “Whoa, this sounds amazing. What is that?” Ten or fifteen years after I started learning guitar, I really started digging into our culture for the sounds that I had heard in my childhood.
For people who have not yet encountered the different styles of Cabo Verde, do you think we can break it down?
Okay, so Cabo Verde is a ten-island country – five islands in the North, five in the South. The South was the first part of Cabo Verde that got populated, so there’s a few more years of history. Firstly there is batuku – the oldest Cabo Verdean rhythm – which is normally performed by a circle of women playing percussion and singing. Then we have funaná, which is originally from the island of Santiago. This one is closer to Portuguese culture because it makes use of the accordion and the ferrinho. But in Cabo Verde these elements gain another perspective, due to our African roots and African rhythms. It’s a mix of Portuguese instruments and African beats. So that’s all on the southern islands.
In the North, the most famous genre is morna. Morna traveled all over Cabo Verde, but it started in Brava, then got to Boa Vista, to São Nicolau, and then to São Vicente. In these different islands, we have different kinds of morna.
Like, melancholy?
Yes, completely! Morna is melancholic. While we have this melancholy, we are also big party animals. So we transformed morna into something faster: coladeira. Coladeira was born in São Vicente, my island. For that, we’re using the same instruments: the cavaquinho, a ten-string guitar, and a little shaker. And then we party.
Another well-known genre is Kolá San Jon. This is more present on the Santo Antão island, the second biggest island. It’s really green and all the great food comes from there. Kolá San Jon is played on multiple tambours, for hours and hours.
You have bandeira in Fogo. We even have mazurka, because we have a history of polka and European dances in Cabo Verde.
Sometimes, when you grow up surrounded by music, you take it for granted. Especially older types of music. As a teenager you might gravitate more towards something more extreme, or something from another place. Did you have to come around to loving morna, fonaná, and other regional styles? Or were you locked in from the beginning?
No, no, of course, as a child, our music is in our blood. It’s always been vibrating in me. But I was indeed more focused on the outside, on rock and roll, because I wanted to have an electric guitar.
When you are on the island, you are always trying to look outside the island. You want to leave. But sooner or later, if you’re a musician, you will be interested in playing the mornas because it resonates differently. So why not explore what is possible? Mix it with rock and roll and electronic music? New stuff. That’s my job, trying to continue the work. Creating something new with it.
Are there people who try to preserve Cabo Verdean music, and who don’t like this kind of new stylistic experimentation?
But even the people who are more traditional, more conservative, they appreciate the music advancing. They love to see young people play the cavaquinho or viola, like they played in the past. Me and my friends, we can just enter a concert with the older guys and play with them. People feel the truth in the process.
So, there is a thriving live music scene. There’s music everywhere you go, in clubs and festivals. But how about a more institutional infrastructure – do you have record labels, dedicated radio stations etc.?
As mentioned, there is a lack of music schools, but also of studios, labels, residencies.
In São Vicente there is only bigger studio, two or three more amateur ones. We need to work on that, constructing big studios on every island. Given the quality we have here, we need to build more music schools, production schools, places to teach people about touring and artist management…
Do you think that has to do with the fact that there’s so much exodus from Cabo Verde? You mentioned that the cultural diaspora is pretty much spread over different places. And there’s more people in the diaspora than on Cabo Verde, right?
Yeah, of course. That is exactly the point. If you want to study music, or audio, or film, you need to leave. People who can and want to do these jobs usually need to come to Europe or the US. And then you stay there because there are conditions to create things.
In total we have half a million people in Cabo Verde and one million spread all over the globe. But for all of us, Cabo Verde is like a fountain of inspiration. All our stories come from there. All our artistic material. We just need to have more funds – so many things are created in Cabo Verde, but the money and the structures never stay there. I think we will have to step up in this regard.
How is that for you personally? A what age did you leave for Lisbon?
I came to Lisbon aged 18. I was studying informatics to become an engineer. Portugal has like a quota of 2% of university courses that they give to Cabo Verdeans. It’s normal for young Cabo Verdeans to finish high school and then leave for Portugal, France, USA, Bolivia, or Brazil. I’ve been in Lisbon half my life now.
Do you feel an urge to go back and build something on the islands, with the knowledge and skills you acquired?
I can only speak for myself, but I want to do way more things there. Spend more time there and start constructing things. In Europe we have opportunities. We play a lot, we create albums, films… but we need to be more on the ground. That’s our next job. We now created this platform, we create our music, we do things. Now we need to give people the capabilities to share. It’s important. One of my main objectives for the next years.
With regards to your own music: How do you capture all of these influences you soaked up in a project like Acácia Maior?
Acácia Maior is my most important project. At least that’s the one most people know me from. But I have several projects that I am involved with. Acácia will always have a special place in my heart though. Through the band, I met Paulino Vieira, our big genius and our greatest point of reference.
But I like to work with all my different projects. There is just so many ideas and music stories to tell. Tabanka Records is mostly a platform where it all comes together. It’s like a home where we all meet to cook and eat together, and exchange ideas. It’s very organic, like “Oh, you’re here! Let’s do a project. We’ll do an album next year.” If the energy is cool, we are open.
During the 20th anniversary edition of Le Guess Who?, Tabanka Records co-curate ‘Sounds of Cabo Verde’, a special program dedicated to the diversity of Cabo Verde music culture, its traditions and the Cabo Verdean diaspora in the Netherlands. ‘Sounds of Cabo Verde’ takes place from 3PM - 10PM on Saturday, 7 November, at De Helling in Utrecht.
Photography by Filipe Gonçalves
