The story
Morna Heritage Festival in Praia/Mindelo
Morna, Cape Verde's melancholic national song genre, gained UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status in December 2019 and is most strongly associated today with Mindelo's Casas de Morna venues and its connection to singer Cesaria Evora. The most specifically documented standalone morna festival, Morna Fest or Sodadi Festival d'Morna, is actually held on Sao Nicolau island rather than in Praia or Mindelo, so this listing's exact identity is uncertain.
Morna, the melancholic, guitar-and-violin Cape Verdean song tradition whose name is thought to derive from the English mourn or the French morne, meaning gloom, emerged in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, with its origins most commonly traced to Boa Vista island even though the exact genesis remains a subject of genuine scholarly debate among ethnomusicologists.