5 - Starting Again in America (1979–88)

Summary

My mother went to America because her mother was here. She went first and brought us here. My grandmother came here because two of her sons were here and brought her here. I moved to America in 1979. I was living in East Providence until now. I just moved to New Bedford last month. I moved down here to New Bedford because I believe here is a better community for Cape Verdeans. There are a lot of Cape Verdeans in Providence and Pawtucket, but they don’t have anything like clubs, anything that you could say, this is a Kriolu thing. A lot of my friends ask me, “Why are you moving to New Bedford? That place is dead!” I said, “You’re wrong, man, this is the best place for Kriolus.”

—N. Tavares

When Norberto Tavares arrived in the US in 1979, he lived in East Providence with his family and began the job of adapting to a new environment. He worked on improving his English skills and took General Education Diploma (GED) tests in order to have his earlier studies acknowledged as the equivalent of a US high-school diploma. Tavares found employment in factories and took some machine shop classes, but found that the schedules and studies did not fit well with his musical ambitions. By late 1979 Norberto and his brother António established a new band, called Tropical Power. Norberto played keyboards, António played bass guitar, and they both sang. They recruited Jack (Joaquim Santos), whose family is originally from the islands of São Vicente and São Nicolau, Cabo Verde, as the drummer. Felix (Felisberto Fontes) played rhythm guitar. Felix and Terêncio Fonseca, who soon joined the band on solo guitar, both spent years living in Dakar, Senegal. António recalls that in the beginning the four of them spent hours rehearsing at his mother’s house to work out their sound. Tropical Power’s repertoire initially consisted of a mixture of Black Power songs, popular mornas, coladeiras, and other styles likes cumbia and calypso, but they soon began writing new music. They gradually added songs from Africa, Portugal, Brazil, and the Caribbean to their playlists and began playing for Cabo Verdean events in southern New England.