“This image is the most horrible one I have and can’t erase, even with so many therapies; and I can’t forgive either,” Dino D’Santiago tells Lusa, regarding the book ‘Cicatrizes’.
The book comprises about 80 texts from a collection of 200 developed during his psychotherapy process and the pre and post-parenthood phase, along with personal “encounters and disagreements”.
These texts were written in the early hours after the birth of his daughter, when Dino D’Santiago would wake up and his mind “would start to race”.
“Between one and six in the morning, I wrote, without thinking I would write a book. I wrote, painted over 70 works, and composed songs,” he explains.
Dino currently has three recorded albums and is contemplating how to release them, convinced they will have significant connections with Brazil.
The literary adventure is set for publication in October. On December 13, his birthday, the 70 artworks he created will be exhibited for the first time.
“It’s more about walking over my scars and closing childhood wounds,” he says, noting that the most visceral ones, which served as exercises in purging during his psychotherapeutic process, were left out.
When asked about his most painful scar, the singer closes his eyes, and as if awakening from a trance, abruptly responds: “The one that hurt the most, because it also involved my family and really hurt a lot and hasn’t healed to this day, was the day the army invaded our home in the 1990s.”
“My father had left for work at six in the morning, they broke down our door, and seeing my mother cry and later, when we went to school, having G3 rifles pointed at us and having our backpacks searched, and seeing my sister and brother cry, that is an image I cannot forgive the country I was born in, ever.”
“They were cruel. When my father arrived, having run from Vilamoura to our home, he was the one to confront these guards saying: ‘We are people of faith, we have nothing, search as you wish, but you will find nothing, but you do not have the right to do what you did,'” he continued.
Born to Cape Verdean parents from Santiago Island, Dino was born in Portugal and grew up in the Bairro dos Pescadores, a former deprived neighborhood in the Algarve city of Quarteira, with the last shanties demolished in 2011.
Scarcity marked his childhood, and to aid the underprivileged, he co-founded the association Mundu Nôbu with Liliana Valpaços, aimed at helping young people from underrepresented communities achieve their full potential through education, civic engagement, and cultural celebration.
Mundu Nôbu will soon have a branch operating in Cape Verde, headquartered in the capital, Praia, adapting the philosophy to the archipelago’s reality but with the same goal: “To work on the self-efficacy and self-confidence of young people,” he stated.
The author of ‘Nova Lisboa’, who performed the song ‘Sodade’ by Cesária Évora with Madonna, also has new musical projects ready. Lusophony and Creole will feature in these works.
