After a festival day full of poetic impressions, we close Saturday with the joyful music of the Cape Verdean band RABASA. Although the band members have lived in and around Rotterdam for years, they remain deeply rooted in Cape Verdean culture and music.
Making music has been second nature to the band’s founders and brothers, João Ortet, Jorge Ortet, Tó Ortet, and Angelito Ortet. They inherited this passion both from older family members and from their church community. Raised in a farming family, the brothers would walk for hours each day through the Cape Verdean landscape to fetch water from an old spring on a green mountaintop. That spring became the inspiration for their band name.Rabasa symbolizes the strength of Cape Verdean musical traditions that form the foundation and inspiration for the band’s sound, now performed by an eight-member ensemble. They have collaborated with numerous musicians and performed on various international stages. On June 6, the Poetry International Festival becomes their stage, where they will take us to the greater heights of their musical landscape.
