Princezito: floating bridge between yesterday and tomorrow

Batuque is a very current style in Princezito’s music. He began to work on this rhythm because he found it appropriate and necessary to bring himself out of the agony he was in. “I made several sketches about the batuk. The dance part, the singing part, the percussion part, the more historical and anthropological part. I recorded three or four on my first and only CD, Spiga, which came out fifteen years ago. Then I started to let the music get inside of me. All the influences I’ve encountered along the way. Cuban, Afro-Cuban, Continental (African) and Cape Verdean music. And the music of the black diaspora, blues, jazz,” he explains. Princinho.

The singer often works with younger artists and says he was a floating bridge between yesterday and tomorrow. “I tried to influence young people to do what we did. Or what our ancestors did. Namely, batuk, finason, ladayna, tabanka. their sides. I heard their voices, their worries, their songs, and I started to make things. Participate in their projects, win the trust of young people, and I succeeded, “says Princesito, who explains how he created fina rap. , which is the result of mixing batuque and finaçon with rap. “I told the young people that we were lucky, that we have traditional rap, which is finaçon, our song poetry. They believed in me, and now I follow this trend very naturally.” Sharing musical experience, lyrics and lyrics makes him an accomplice of youth. “It gave me a certain opening. I listen to all kinds of music so I understand their world. It’s not fair not to know what my kids are listening to. I snuck into their world and let them into mine. And in harmony, we try to make music together, especially in Cape Verde,” the singer says.

B.Leza is the “home” that Princesito visits most often outside of Cape Verde. “There are some songs that these walls know. They will ask, and I will give them: Lua, Pilonkan, Bakandesa, Tan Kalakatan and other new ones that have not yet come out. but what practically no one knows. I feel good. to get away from the routine and refresh the repertoire. but also to make life difficult for the musicians, in a good way. to make them do other things that we are not used to doing,” says Princezito about the concert in Lisbon.