Cape Verde Secular Celebrations
New Year's Day is celebrated on 1 January. Amilcar Cabral Day (24 January), recognizes the birthday of the liberator of Cape Verde, one of the leaders in the war of independence. Independence Day is celebrated on 5 July.
Traditional festivities
Traditional festivities are generally religious, and they follow the Catholic liturgical calendar. Catholic saints' days predominate, and the form their celebration takes is fairly constant; most have church services, processions, drumming, and special foods associated with them. Most take place during the months of May, June, and July, with some in November.
Common to all the islands are the feasts of Christmas, Saint John, and Carnival
The oldest continuously celebrated festivities take place in the islands of Santiago and Fogo. In June Santiago celebrates Tabanka, a feast of African origin. The word tabanka means an association of mutual help or a brotherhood. Tabanka festivities begin in May, perhaps because this was the time, according to Cape Verdean ethnographer Felix Monteiro, when slave owners would concede certain liberties to their slaves. Today celebrants dress in costumes that envision a royal court society and play drums and the conch-shell horns characteristic of this event.
Of the many festivities in Cape Verde the batuku (batuque) deserves special mention. Usually composed of solo dancing and call-and-response singing by a women's chorus with a leader, the batuku tradition is today strongest on Santiago Island. But there are hints of its presence on almost every other island. Themes characteristic of the batuku appear in wedding songs. The batuku from Santiago is the most typically African in style. It is composed essentially of two parts, the txabeta (tchabeta) and the finçaon. During the batuku the lead singer, usually a person of some respect in the group, takes command. First she dances slowly, setting the pace for the strong, rhythmic beat the batukadeiras keep by striking their palms on a folded pano (sash cloth) held between their thighs. A dancer awaits in the middle of the circle formed by the batukadeiras (batucadeiras) and at a certain moment after the beat is fully established and internalized by her, it's time for txabeta: the rhythm suddenly accelerates and the dancer keeps time with her hips.
The largest festivity on Fogo occurs on May 1st, the saint's day of Saint Philip (Nho São Filipe), who is the patron saint of that island. To São Filipe, Fogo's largest city, on that day, the feast - one of the most elaborate in the entire archipelago - draws observers and participants from all over the country and the United States and Europe as well. In separate sections of the city, celebrants attain equal enthusiasm. Families of higher status watch these celebrations from a balcony, a physical separation that gives material form to the barriers that formerly separated whites and blacks, and today separate the richer from the poorer classes. The Feast of São Filipe includes the ritual pounding of corn in a single large, ceremonial mortar by three pestle-wielding women accompanied by drumming and singing. It also includes the ritual slaughter of a lamb or goat for the supper of the kanizade (canizade) troupe of masqueraders as well as the erection of a mastro, a replica of a ship's mast that is dressed with branches of the wild olive tree or the coconut palm. Imbued with a magical aura, the mastro is placed close by the entrance of a church, to the rhythms of drums, chants, and clapping. Many aspects of the ritual have African origins. The mastro can also be seen in the feasts of Santo Antão, Santo Andre, São Pedro, and São João in the islands of S. Antão and Brava.
Carnival is another important festivity in Cape Verde, as are the pilgrimages of São Jo o, Saint Antonio, and Santa Cruz that take place in various islands at about the same time. There is also Nha Santa Catarina in the village of Assomada and Nossa Senhora da Graça, in Praia, both in Santiago. Every island has a patron saint and saint's-day celebration.
Some pilgrimage festivities are also related to the rites of sowing and of harvest. These rural festivities are all from the northern islands and are gradually dying out because rain is so irregular in Cape Verde.
In these pilgrimages people walk long distances to keep their promises, offering the first fruits of harvest, which are sold to benefit the church. Such is the practice in S. Antão. In Brava the votive gifts are tied to the ceremonial mast and are eventually left for people to take as they please when the celebration ends.
During the São João celebrations model ships carried by hand or worn as a costume voyage symbolically through the streets, stopping to demand gifts. The ship, like the gift-bearing mast, is a complex symbol, a combination of remembered historical periods in the popular mind. Ships are festooned with brightly colored banners; the Portuguese flag that once flew has been replaced by the national flag. Ships' sails bear the Christian Cross of the Portuguese Religious Order that financed the expeditions of discovery. The ship's harassment of bystanders for gifts represents the assault on the Islands by pirate ships, carjenas, which regularly stole and carried away their wealth. In S. Antão the feast of São João is celebrated most notably in the villages of Coculi, Garça, and Cha de Pedra and in the towns of Porto Novo, Pombas, and Paúl.
In their color, movement, and rich symbolic meaning Cape Verdean celebrations give material expression to important themes in local life, history, and popular thought. They are an evanescent yet cyclically revolving reflection of the forces that have shaped Cape Verdean life, and they are a time when we pause and celebrate and feel the human spirit that has been molded on these islands over centuries.