Evora was born and raised on the island of São Vicente, Cape Verde, off the west coast of Africa. Her father, a musician, died when she was seven, and she was raised by her mother and grandmother. Evora began singing as a child, and by the time she was a young adult, she routinely performed in the bars of her hometown of Mindelo. She sang in Creole-Portuguese, usually accompanied by guitar, piano, or the cavaquinho, a four-stringed instrument similar to a ukulele. She became known for singing mornas, traditional Cape Verdean folk songs that were sorrowful, emotion-charged chronicles of the country’s long and bitter history of isolation, slave trade, and population loss due to emigration. She also sang coladeras—mornas with a faster tempo. Although her music earned her a multitude of fans on the islands of Cape Verde, it did not provide financial success.

Frustrated by financial and personal issues, as well as by the turmoil generated by Cape Verde’s newfound independence, Evora stopped performing in public in the mid-1970s. She resumed singing in 1985 and later left the islands to perform with other Cape Verdean musicians in Lisbon. There she caught the attention of concert promoter José da Silva, who persuaded her to come to Paris to perform and record her music. With da Silva’s assistance, she garnered attention in France in 1988 with her album La Diva aux pieds nus (“The Barefoot Diva,” the nickname based on her fondness for going without shoes). The positive response generated by the 1992 release of Miss perfumado earned her widespread popularity in Europe and led to an international tour. During the 1990s and early 2000s, Evora continued to record new albums and perform around the world. She won a 2003 Grammy Award for her album Voz d’amor. Her final album, Cesaria Evora & … (2010), was a collection of duets assembled through collaboration with musicians from more than 15 countries.