The story
Sao Joao Baptista and Cola San Jon Festival in Porto Novo/Ribeira Grande/Mindelo
One of Cabo Verde's oldest popular celebrations, brought by Portuguese settlers from the fifteenth century and observed since at least the seventeenth, this Porto Novo feast on Santo Antao island runs June 23 to 25 and draws an estimated ten thousand pilgrims under the motto De Porto Novo pa Mund. Its centrepiece, Kola San Jon, a drum-led paired dance in a six-eight fertility rhythm, fuses Portuguese Catholic devotion with West African-rooted tradition and holds Intangible Cultural Heritage status in both Cabo Verde and Portugal.
The feast of Sao Joao Baptista is among the oldest popular Catholic celebrations still observed in Cabo Verde, brought to the archipelago by Portuguese settlers from the fifteenth century onward and traditionally marked on the night of June 23 into the morning of June 24, with devotion to the saint documented as far back as the seventeenth century.