![“A [minha filha] Dayo was born a singer. It started singing not yet a year. Not strange, at her age was already on this path ”](https://lnginnorthernbc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/1752732656_1.91x1.jpeg "“A [minha filha] Dayo was born a singer. It started")
Podcast
Proudly African, born in Cape Verde, and vocation artist, Mayra Andrade has always been guided by music throughout her life. About two years ago, with the arrival of his daughter Dayo, he became a mother for the first time, and feels that he had to reinvent herself. “I have the feeling of being in a multitasking Constant existential, ”he says. In this episode of such a podcast, he speaks of the pains that shape it and the silent force of those who sing to the world with a baby on his lap. Listen to the conversation here
She was born a singer 40 years ago, was reborn mother in 2023, and, between either time, never turned off the creative beats. “I was active until seven months [de gravidez]leaps on stage, and jumps, ”recalls Mayra Andrade, more than two years after the birth of her daughter Dayo, a name spelled in the Yoruba African language, and which means joy.
“She came all in music. I make weird, semi -contained melodic lines to see if she reproduces, and she can,” says the artist in this episode of such a podcast, recognizing in the first steps of her daughter her own walk. “It started singing not yet a year,” says Mayra, adding that with this age also expressed the musical vein.
“I’ve always been a very spiritual child. I know the name of the energies that accompany me, and I invoke these energies before stepping on the stage, because it is very important that that sacred space, which is the stage, and the gift I received, is not in vain.”
Aligned with each note and rhythm – “I always pray a lot for each expression done on the stage to reach the hearts of people” – the artist says of daughter Dayo what her father, Carlos Andrade, also says of herself: “Born singer”.
The maternal and maternal gaze is sharpened as a greater self-knowledge and awareness of life. “I end up, often, not valuing the power I have. Only a person with such a great power in itself can, with dignity and in its silence, be on the stages of the world singing, with a baby in his lap, breastfeeding and dealing with things that should not have to deal.”
Versatility favors “the feeling of being in a constant existential multitasking,” says Mayra, noting, “as if they were planting a forest, holding a ship not to sink, sowing I don’t know what, flying, burying me.”
Between the earth, the sea and the air, the Cape Verdean artist finds itself. “My body turned out to be a barn of many memories, of many experiences, and it is as if I was still discovering, through the body, the emotional contours of what I have lived in the last few years of my life.”
The recognition of the old scars follows new brands. “I am in the phase of the snake that changes skin, the butterfly that comes out of the cocoon, and this metamorphosis has steps that are not beautiful.”
The transition finds musical translation in “Reencanto”, the latest album of the Cape Verdean singer, recorded live and matured in gestation.
“I was already leaving this life [de Dayo] Grow in me, and reverberate in my voice in a different way. ”
From lesson in teaching, the singer and songwriter recognizes: “I never learned much for love, nor for joy. I think we are a species that learns from pain and adversity.”
Proudly African, this daughter of an old combatant for the independence of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau also presents itself as a Pan-Africanist.
“I am African and I am from a Creole nation. We have a European genetic and cultural and social heritage, but we are an African country. We learn from stones, and squeeze stone milk.”
Without renouncing the dreams of a fairer destination for Africa, Mayra Andrade, awarded this year with Lifetime Africa Achievement Prize in the Millennium Excellence Awards, recalls that “it’s hard to think of a bright future to the African continent without thinking about global change.”
Follow the conversation with Georgina Angelica and Paula Cardoso.
Such podcast is a weekly podcast dedicated to interpersonal relationships and human affections. Through deep conversations with remarkable guests, the podcast reveals an original narrative and opens the doors to an international community of reflection and interest.
Pioneer in black and Afro-descendant culture in Portugal, it is a space where all lives fit, emotionally linked by trial experiences and humanization stories.
In long conversations without script, Georgina Angelica and Paula Cardoso feature special guests in new episodes, every Thursday on Expresso, SIC and SIC Notícias sites or any podcast platform.
He specializes in education and social intervention. It acts as an educator, trainer and speaker, with over 20 years of experience in Portugal, England and Angola.
She is the founder of the network and author of the children’s book series ‘African Force’. She is also a host of the TV show “Rumos”, broadcast on RTP Africa.
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