Hélio Batalha is Cape Verde’s ‘voice of the ghetto’
Hélio Batalha is an MC from Cape Verde who has risen from humble beginnings and a tough childhood.
He had eight siblings, and when he lost his father at a young age, he started doing small jobs to help his mother, whose perseverance was his inspiration.
“Being poor was no reason to give up. On the contrary perhaps because I experienced this reality, it served as the inspiration for my music to expand,” he says.
His musical career began in 2007 when he won a song competition on the radio. Later, he released three mixtapes that made him one of the best known names in Rap Criolo.
After awards and a touring home and abroad in 2016, he released his first album Karta D’Alforia to critical acclaim. Now known as “the voice of the ghettos”, Hélio is today one of the pillars of Cape Verdean and lusophone hiphop.
“My music is a weapon… It’s a continuation of the struggle of all those men and women who fought in the past to free Cape Verdean people and the rest of Africa.”
Hélio has strong feelings about the preservation and passing on of his culture. He feels it is best expressed in his track Immortal.
“To be immortal we have to raise our heads and face problems head on. We have to preserve our customs, our history, our ancestral knowledge, everything that represents us as a people.”
Hélio praises the Cape Verdean Society of Musicians, which he says authors and composers, but says only a few in the country manage to make a living from their music.
“You don’t live like a king here. We survive with our talent, but it’s really hard,” he adds.
The rapper believes Cabo Verde’s large diaspora has a big role to play in supporting the country’s musicians and keeping the nation’s cultural identity, and worries that they listen the songs “as entertainment and not for the richness of their messages.
“The diaspora should take a firmer position on the social problems that exist on the African continent. Today the new generation who live in the United States or Lisbon cannot speak Creole, many of them don’t know our traditional dish Cachupa… do not know Funaná, or Morna music.”
One of his most listened to songs is Nada é ka impossível, which means nothing is impossible. “It talks about my trajectory. I left a poor neighbourhood where I went through many difficulties, and today I’m one of the great names of rap in Cape Verde. It says that we should not give up our dreams and that when you believe in your work, and you do it with with love, the doors open and you achieve your goals
By BBC
