Early life and music career Cesária Évora was born on 27 August 1941, in
Mindelo,
São Vicente (then a colony in
Portuguese Cape Verde), as one of seven children. Her father Justino was a violinist; he died while she was still a child. Her mother Joana was a cook and a maid who was forced to raise her many children alone following her husband's death. The family's poverty, and that of the entire colony, meant that she received little formal education. Évora took up singing as a child. When she was 16 years old, she began a romantic relationship with a guitarist who encouraged her to begin performing
morna and
coladeira, and she began performing in bars. She became the headliner for Mindelo's Café Royal before achieving wider success in Cape Verde by performing on Radio Mindelo. Furthermore, she suffered from alcoholism, depression, and undernourishment. For these reasons, Évora retired from music in the 1970s. She released several more albums, each two to three years apart, over the following years. Évora's ninth album, ''
Voz d'Amor (Voice of Love''), won a
Grammy Award in 2004. On 17 December 2011, Évora died in Mindelo, at the age of 70 from
respiratory failure and
hypertension. A Spanish newspaper reported that 36 hours before her death she was still receiving people—and smoking—in her home. ==Awards and honors==