Ne Nas

Manuel “Ne Nas” Gonçalves has travelled a long way to fully discover the musical voice that was planted within him 45 years ago in his birthplace on the island of Fogo, Cape Verde. As a child growing up in the city of Praia on the island of Santiago, Ne Nas felt a deep drive to get involved in the art of music. So, at 11 years of age, alongside his study of carpentry, Ne Nas pursued this wish, studying under some of Santiago’s best musicians. 

But it was not until Ne Nas immigrated to the United States in 2002 and connected with musicians of the Cape Verdean communities in Rhode Island and Massachusetts that he began to take his musical career more seriously, beginning his work as a band frontman.  Using the skills he honed in Santiago through the traditional rhythms of funaná, batuku, finaçon and tabanka, Ne Nas collaborated with other local musicians to form New England’s CV Tempra band.

A growing reputation in the Cape Verdean music community brought Ne Nas to perform in a recent memorial concert in honor of one of Cape Verde’s greatest singers and composers, Orlando Pantera. Fitting these steps together into a musical staircase, carpenter Ne Nas’s career consistently reaches new heights; most recently, he released his debut album, Balanciadu.