Mayra Andrade

Mayra Andrade (born 13 February 1985) is a Cape Verdean singer who lives and records in Lisbon, Portugal.

Background Andrade was born in Havana, Cuba, to parents from Cape Verde, and she and her family returned to Cape Verde a few days after her birth. Andrade spent the first years of her life in Cape Verde, but because her father was a diplomat for the Cape Verdean government, she traveled extensively with her family and lived in many countries during her childhood. Hence, during her childhood, she lived in Senegal, Angola, and Germany. However, she spent around two months of the year Andrade moved to Paris in 2002 when she was 17 years old and lived there until late 2015 when she moved to Lisbon, Portugal.

She is multilingual, but most of the lyrics of the songs on her albums are in her native Cape Verdean Crioulo language. The first song she remembers singing is "O Leãozinho" by the Brazilian musician Caetano Veloso, whom she has cited as a musical influence.

Career Andrade often performed as a teenager, and songs in Portuguese, Cape Verdean creole, French, and English.

Andrade's fifth album, Manga, was released on 8 February 2019. The album was recorded in Paris and Abidjan and features a mixture of afrobeats, urban music, and traditional Cape Verdean rhythms.

Since 2015, Andrade has served as a celebrity ambassador for the United Nations campaign "Free and Equal", which seeks to promote the human rights of the LGBT community in Cape Verde.

Awards and nominations At age 16, Andrade won the 2001 Jeux de la Francophonie songwriting contest.

Andrade won the Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Record Critics Award) for her album Navega in 2007 and for Stória, stória... in 2009. She also won the Newcomer award at the BBC Radio 3 Awards for World Music 2008.

In 2014, her album Lovely Difficult was nominated in France for the Victoires de la Musique Award, in the World Music category.

Discography

Albums