I had been longing for Césaria Évora to return to the London stage, so I was delighted she was due to appear at the Royal Festival Hall during the London Jazz Festival in November. Part of a brief European tour, it was the only UK date in her 2011 schedule. Sadly, however, it was not to be. In late September, her Paris-based record company, Lusafrica, announced that she had cancelled all her autumn shows on medical advice, and was retiring with immediate effect.

Speaking to Véronique Mortaigne of Le Monde shortly afterwards, Évora expressed her sadness at not bidding farewell in person. “I’d like you to tell my fans I’m sorry,” she said, “but now I must rest. I infinitely regret having to absent myself due to illness, I would have liked to give more pleasure to those who have followed me for so long.”

Évora has suffered a series of health scares in recent years and has never hidden her passion for cigarettes and the kind of salty snacks that heart surgeons would love to outlaw. Nonetheless, the news came as a shock to those who attended her concerts in Europe earlier this year, when her voice seemed as rich and evocative as ever.

Born in Mindelo, Cape Verde’s most culturally sophisticated city, Évora has been singing languid, smoky morna and jaunty coladêra numbers since her teens. She has always had a rapt local following and in the 1960s, as now, her voice was part of the soundtrack of daily life in the islands. But wider fame proved elusive and she had to wait until her late 40s for her international career to take flight.

When an enterprising young producer, José da Silva, invited her to Paris to make a recording for the Lusafrica label, the result, La Diva aux Pieds Nus (The Barefoot Diva), turned everything around. It was released in 1988, two years after Paul Simon’s Graceland, at a time when world music appreciation was beginning to soar. Évora became the toast of the Parisian African community and her popularity spread; soon, she was being hailed as a figurehead of traditional Cape Verdean music.

Some have claimed that her habit of performing barefoot was a gesture of solidarity towards impoverished Cape Verdeans, past and present, but she, in typically candid style, simply said she didn’t like shoes all that much. Always down-to-earth, she never let fame go to her head, perhaps because she’d already had such a full life before celebrity struck. Let’s hope that now she’s back with her family on the island of São Vicente, she’ll enjoy a full and happy retirement, too.