Cacha Mundinho at Amstelkerk

Cacha Mundinho is the new group around singer-songwriter and guitarist Joana Almeida, who hails from Portugal and has been living in Amsterdam for several years. Together with Turkish/Dutch percussionist Sjahin During (known from Arifa, among others), Spanish Maripepa Contreras on oboe and duduk and Brazilian Pedro Ivo Ferreira on double bass, she forms the world-jazz quartet Cacha Mundinho.
They will present their debut album Vento do Mar, giving their own sound to lusophone world music, combined with jazz and with room for improvisation.

Cacha Mundinho, means as much as "catch a small world". "Cacha" is derived from Cape Verdean Creole and is a corruption of catch. Mundinho is a diminutive of the word mundo (world)....

read more

Cacha Mundinho is the new group around singer-songwriter and guitarist Joana Almeida, who hails from Portugal and has been living in Amsterdam for several years. Together with Turkish/Dutch percussionist Sjahin During (known from Arifa, among others), Spanish Maripepa Contreras on oboe and duduk and Brazilian Pedro Ivo Ferreira on double bass, she forms the world-jazz quartet Cacha Mundinho.
They will present their debut album Vento do Mar, giving their own sound to lusophone world music, combined with jazz and with room for improvisation.

Cacha Mundinho, means as much as "catch a small world". "Cacha" is derived from Cape Verdean Creole and is a corruption of catch. Mundinho is a diminutive of the word mundo (world).

The music of the lusophone world
The group breathes new life into the old almost forgotten musical routes of the lusophone world - the regions and cultures that share the Portuguese language.* Cacha Mundinho takes their music on a journey of songs with an Iberian feel and influences from the Portuguese troubadour tradition through North Africa and the Middle East to India and Brazil. With her original compositions, singer songwriter Joana Almeida vividly recounts the ancient, 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-rate jazz and improvisation skills. In this way, Cacha Mundinho creates an entirely unique sound through which they honour the music of the lusophone world.

From Porto to Amsterdam
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, adding other styles and instruments.
Almeida came to Amsterdam from Porto in the early 2020s to explore here the rich musical cultures that fall under the umbrella of lusophony, with percussionist Sjahin During. She stayed in Amsterdam and together they founded Cacha Mundinho, the first group with which Joana performs her own compositions. With Maripepa Contreras and Pedro Ivo Ferreira joining them, they found the perfect quartet to further explore Portuguese-speaking musical cultures with, and take them to new horizons.

Joana Almeida | vocals & guitar (Portugal)
Maripepa Contreras | oboe, English horn & duduk (Spain)
Pedro Ivo Ferreira | double bass (Brazil)
Sjahin During | percussion (Netherlands/Turkey)

show less