Cape Verde, an archipelago nearly 400 miles off the coast of Senegal, is home to around 800,000 people: about the same population as Leicester, and for decades the country’s music was very little known beyond its borders. Then, in 1992, Cape Verdean singer Cesária Évora released her album Miss Perfumado.

The album became a crossover hit across Europe, selling 500,000 copies in France alone, while in the US, Évora became the biggest selling African artist of the 20th century. Miss Perfumado showcased Évora’s sublime voice – smoky, weary, bruised yet seductive – singing Cape Verdean mornas: mournful ballads sung in the Kriolu language which blends old Portuguese with west African languages, with backings that have the same cross-cultural mix. A concert at London’s Barbican next month will celebrate Évora’s legacy with morna performed by rising Cape Verdean singers (Ceuzany, Elida Almeida, Lucibela, Teófilo Chantre) and Mayra Andrade, a celebrated vocalist who was mentored by her. “These concerts honouring her are important,” Andrade says. “She put Cape Verde on the map and we Cape Verdeans are determined to keep her name and music alive.”

The success of Miss Perfumado won Évora fame and fortune aged 51, after a lifetime shadowed by poverty. Raised in Mindelo, a port city on the island of São Vicente, her widowed mother was unable to feed her children and at 10, Évora was placed in an orphanage. Her music career started out with performances in bars in her early teens.

Recordings she made in the 1960s were released in the Netherlands, where there is a substantial Cape Verdean community, but were not successful, and Évora retired from singing in 1975, living with her mother and struggling with alcoholism and depression. But she felt strong enough to return to performing in 1985 and morna singer Bana (AKA Adriano Gonçalves) brought her to Lisbon to sing in his restaurant and began recording her, selling cassettes to the local Cape Verdean community.

Here, in 1987, José da Silva – a Paris-based Cape Verdean musician whose day job was working for France’s SNCF railways – witnessed Évora sing to diners at the restaurant. Impressed, he founded the Lusafrica label specifically for her. On her first two albums Évora sang over pop arrangements and attracted little attention, but for 1991’s Mar Azul (Blue Sea), Évora insisted on singing backed by a small acoustic combo, as she did in Cape Verde. Mar Azul’s sparse, melancholy beauty won Évora a new audience; a year later Miss Perfumado made her a star.

I had the good fortune to interview Évora twice – the first time in London in 1999, the second in Paris in 2001. We spoke through her translator, and I found Évora droll and wise. I’d read that the always barefooted Évora didn’t wear shoes so as to show solidarity with impoverished peoples but, when I put this to her, she pooh-poohed it: having grown up in poverty, by the time she could afford shoes she found footwear uncomfortable.

“Why should I be surprised that people like my singing?” she replied when I enquired as to how she felt about her international fame. “In Cape Verde I was always asked to sing for the foreigners when they visited and they liked my singing; I knew if I could get to Europe people would appreciate me.”

Success allowed Évora to provide for family and friends, yet came too late for her to properly enjoy. “I wish I had been recognised when I was younger as now I tour the world but I just want to go back to Cape Verde – I’m not interested in parties or glamour.” Noting that her hotel faced Hyde Park, I suggested we take a walk in the park and maybe visit one of the nearby royal palaces, but Évora declined, saying: “I’m not interested in London or New York or Paris. You have more resources than Cape Verde; beyond that we are all the same.”

She mentioned the disappointment that followed her Dutch recordings “disappearing” – promises of concerts and payment were not honoured – and alleged that she was never paid by Bana for her Lisbon cassettes. “I saw no results for my work.” Da Silva, she said, was the first person in music to treat her honourably. I asked Évora if she remained in contact with Bana and she replied by crossing herself, adding: “God help me – no!”

The hardships Évora had experienced across her first half-century made her a stoic. After three failed marriages and one of her three children dying in childhood she told me she now had no interest in romance. She lit up when talking about her homeland, and after our Paris chat I watched her perform wrapped in the Cape Verde flag, but she didn’t want to discuss her tribulations – Andrade recalls Évora once telling her she had not drunk alcohol for a year, then never mentioning the subject again.

Évora didn’t quit smoking, though: “Cesária always insisted on smoking and I’m allergic to tobacco so, when we were together, I’d have to put up with her puffing away,” Andrade says. “But she was like a grandmother to me – a very generous, warm person. I first met her aged 12 and told her I was also a singer – I know, I was audacious! – and she encouraged me. I learned a lot from her.”

Da Silva ended up managing and producing Évora, and ensured she never rested on her laurels, pairing her with top Cuban and Brazilian musicians; famous fans including Caetano Veloso and Bonnie Raitt made guest appearances. The seven studio albums she released after Miss Perfumado are all of a high standard, and while there were plenty of mornas already written – Évora’s late uncle B Leza was a noted composer of them – contemporary Cape Verdean songwriters queued up to write new ones for her. Another famous fan, Madonna, requested Évora sing at her wedding to Guy Ritchie. Évora declined, but you can perhaps detect her influence on Madonna’s 2019 Portugal-rooted album Madame X.

The UK initially lagged behind Europe and the US in getting behind Évora, with BBC Radio 2 allegedly refusing to playlist her as she didn’t sing in English. David Jones, former head of live music organisation Serious, ensured she won a British audience by getting her booked at festivals and concert halls, and recalls organising a fundraising concert for Évora’s children’s charity at Annabel’s nightclub in Mayfair in London.

“Tickets were £125 each – which seemed a fortune back then – and Cesária loved singing in a small club, saying it reminded her of clubs she had sung in when young,” he says. “She was a lovely person, always looking out for others. And José da Silva, you could tell he wanted what’s best for Cesária. She’d joke with me about José working her so hard but I know she loved getting up and singing. She saw herself taking the stage and being a channel for this music.”

In 2008 Évora suffered a minor stroke while touring Australia and her health declined. But, says Andrade, “she could never stop singing – we sang for the final time in China in 2010 and her energy was fading but her voice was still there.” Évora also had heart surgery, and hypertension and respiratory illness caused her death in 2011 aged 70; it was reported that she was drinking, smoking and singing with friends and family until her final hours.

Today, Mindelo’s international airport named after her – a statue of Évora greets visitors – and Cape Verdean music thrives. Andrade, meanwhile, still holds on to another of their valuable conversations together. “She said, ‘if you are a singer, never forget the audience will decide if you go up or down’. Good advice.”