Cacha Mundinho - album presentation Vento do Mar

Lusophone world music

The group breathes new life into the ancient almost forgotten musical routes of the lusophonic world - the regions and cultures that share the Portuguese language. With their music, Cacha Mundinho takes a journey of songs with an Iberian atmosphere and influences from the Portuguese troubadour tradition via North Africa and the Middle East to India and Brazil.

Singer songwriter Joana Almeida uses her original compositions to vividly tell the old, historical stories of these routes and the musical encounters along the way.

The quartet brings together the diverse musical influences from these countries and combines them with their first-class jazz and improvisation skills. In this way, Cacha Mundinho creates their own sound with which they honor the music of the lusophonic world. To know more about this festival, visit the website for all information and performances.

From Porto to Amsterdam

The young Joana Almeida has followed her own unique path: she is one of the very first female classical fado guitarists in Portugal. She studied with several fado masters and in 2019 was invited to join the cast of the oldest fado house in Porto, the Casa da Mariquinhas. In 2020 she founded the first female fado ensemble, the Amara Quartet.

Joana composes her own work in Portuguese, inspired by fado and traditional Portuguese troubadour songs, but with her own unique and contemporary take on the tradition, also adding other styles and instruments.

At the beginning of 2020, Almeida came to Amsterdam from Porto to explore the rich musical cultures that fall under the umbrella of lusophony together with Sjahin During. She continued to live in Amsterdam and together they founded Cacha Mundinho, the first group with which Joana performed her own compositions. With Maripepa Contreras and Pedro Ivo Ferreira, they found the perfect quartet to further explore Portuguese-language music cultures and take them to new horizons.