Carmen Souza arrived in Cape Verde with a label as a fusion singer, a cocktail of sounds in which jazz and Cape Verdean music stand out in the midst of a vast palette of influences. Although somewhat reductionist, this stamp placed on her by the specialized press fits her like a glove. It also went down very well with the public that practically filled the National Assembly auditorium – the audience was expectant at first, but ended up giving itself over to the singer after the first “homage” paid to Cesária Évora.

Associated with names like Billie Holliday, Ella Fritzgerald and Nina Simone, Carmen Souza seems to know right where she wants to go, drinking in their influences while at the same time occupying her own space. And her chameleon-like voice allows her to do this.

In a single song, she delves into the warm and melodic registers of the great jazz divas, only to flee into more contemporary terrain immediately thereafter.

Pushed forward by an often protagonistic bass – the responsibility of musician and producer Theo Pas’cal – as well as a piano that frequently seeks out Latin jazz and a strongly-paced drum kit, the singer cloaks Cape Verdean music in new garb, this distancing herself from what is currently being done by other female Cape Verdean singers.

The visibility she has garnered internationally, along with the quality and coherence demonstrated in her first three albums, seems to have to do with this – with her finding of another path for the evolution and renovation of morna or funaná, giving them a new breadth and life.

Despite the physical distance separating her from Cape Verde – indeed, last night’s concert was her first in the country – her desire to maintain the connection is present not only in the fact that she sings in Crioulo, but also in the inarguably Cape Verdean telluric rhythm – not to mention her influences.

One of these is Horace Silver, the American musician and composer of Cape Verdean origin who played with some of the greatest names in the history of jazz. “Song for My Father” was Souza’s tribute to the pianist who, in the 1950s and 60s, began fusing the sonorities of the islands with jazz.

After more than an hour of music came the standing ovation, the obligatory encore and the continuation of the voyage into the aromas of Cape Verde, surrounded by a whirlwind of fusions.