Various Artists
Space Echo: They Mystery Behind the Cosmic Sound of Cabo Verde Finally Revealed
I’m just gonna repeat verbatim the first few paragraphs of the liner notes here as they tell the story better than I could…
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"In the spring of 1968 a cargo ship was preparing to leave the port of Baltimore with an important shipment of musical instruments. Its final destinations was Rio De Janeiro where the EMSE Exhibition (Exposicao Mundial Do Son Eletronico) was going to be held.
It was the first expo of its kind to take place in the Southern Hemisphere and many of the leading companies in the field of electronic music were involved. Rhodes, Moog, Farfisa, Hammond and Korg, just to name a few, were all eager to present their newest synthesizers and other gadgets to a growing and promising South American market, spearheaded by Brazil and Colombia.
The ship with the goods set sail on the 20th of March on a calm morning and mysteriously disappeared from the radar on the very same day. One can only imagine the surprise of the villagers of Cachaco, on the Sao Nicolau island of Cabo Verde, when a few months later they woke up and found a ship stranded in their fields, in the middle of nowhere, 8 km from any coastline.
Portuguese scientists and physicians were ordered to the scene and after weeks of thorough studies and research, it was concluded that the ship had fallen from the sky. One of the less plausible theories was that it might have fallen from a Russian military cargo aircraft. Th locals joked that again the government had wasted their tax money on a useless exercise, as a simple look at the crater generated by the impact was self-explanatory. “No need for the Portuguese rocket scientists to explain this!” they laughed.
What the villagers didn’t know was that traces of cosmic particles were discovered on the boat. The bow of the ship showed traces of extreme heat, very similar to traces found on meteors, suggesting that the ship had penetrated the atmosphere at high speed. That theory also didn’t make sense, since such an impact would have reduced the ship to dust. Mystery permeated the discovery.
Finally, a team of welders arrived to open the containers and the whole village waited impatiently. The atmosphere, which had been filled with joy and excitement, suddenly gave way to astonishment. Hundreds of boxes appeared, all containing keyboards and other instruments which they had never seen before, all useless in an area devoid of electricity. Disappointment was palpable. The goods were temporarily stored in the local church and the woman of the village had insisted a solution be found before Sunday mass.
It is said that the charismatic, anti-colonial leader Amilcar Cabral ordered the instruments be distributed equally in places that had access to electricity, which placed them mainly in schools.
This distribution was the best thing that could have happened - keyboards found fertile grounds in the hands of curious children born with an innate sense of rhythm. This in turn would later facilitate the modernization of local rhythms such as morns, coladeras and funana, the highly danceable and mythical rhythm banned by the colonial rulers until 1975, probably for being too powerful."
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The idea that supernatural powers can lift a cargo ship and that it ultimately ends up radically changing the musical direction of a small tropical island...well, I just WANT to believe it. I hope you do too.
