Beautiful Voices from Around the World Quiz

Answer: Cape Verde

As the "barefooted diva", Evora (1941 - 2011) garnered international fame with her traditional deeply sorrowful Cape Verdean folk songs about desolation and despair, which are called "mornas". Mornas were probably brought to Cabo Verde by Angolan slaves. The music is similar to the Portuguese fado but with a hint of Creole, Argentinian tango and Brazilian modinha.

Born and raised on the island São Vicente, Évora got an early start in music, singing in night clubs in harbor town Mindelo. After the independence of Cabo Verde in 1975, the economy took a severe blow and Évora needed to make money doing all sorts of jobs. Only at the tender age of 45, she started singing again. A chance meeting with a French-Capeverdean producer in Lisbon resulted in an unlikely international breakthrough late in her career.

Accompanied by piano or a ukelele-type of guitar called "cavaquinho", Évora sang in Creole-Portuguese and usually performed unshod.

Answer: Argentina

Despite - or because of - her humble indigenous origins, Haydée Mercedes Sosa (1935 - 2009) became one of the flagbearers of South-American protest singers, earning her the honorary title "La Voz del América" (the Voice of America).

She was actively involved in the Argentinian communist movement and spoke out publicly against the military junta in Argentina (1976-1983). After she was arrested during a concert and received several threats from state-run death squads, she decided to go into exile. She lived in Madrid and Paris until the disastrous outcome of the Falklands war had crippled the Argentinian dictatorship to such extent that she could return home safely.

Upon returning to her home country, Mercedes Sosa became immensely popular with the home crowds and the rest of the world soon followed suit. During a long and fruitful career of 40 years, she collaborated with Luciano Pavarotti, Sting, Shakira and Andrea Bocelli amongst many others. Her most famous song is perhaps "Gracias a la Vida".

After the death of "La Negra", a mourning period of three days was observed in Argentina.

Answer: Sweden

Inspired by Connie Francis, Agnetha Åse Fältskog (born 1950 in Jönköping) was determined to make it big as a singer, dropping out of high school at age 15 to actively pursue a career in music. A break-up with her boyfriend when she was 17 led to her writing a song called "Jag var så kär", which reached the top of the charts in Sweden. An acclaimed role as Maria Magdalena in the Swedish version of "Jesus Christ Superstar" followed.

In 1969 Fältskog met Björn Ulvaeus, who was already writing songs with Benny Andersson. Benny was romantically involved with Anni-Frid Lyngstad, and soon they all started performing together. First under the name of "Björn & Benny, Agnetha & Frida", but their manager Stig Anderson decided in 1973 that they would continue under the now world-famous acronym ABBA (even though a fish factory in Sweden already operated under that name).

Her wedding with Ulvaeus in 1971 drew large crowds and left Fältskog injured after a police horse stepped on her foot. The marriage didn't hold up under the immense pressures of their international stardom and was annulled in 1979. After ABBA decided to put their co-operation on hold indefinitely in 1983, Fältskog had on and off success as a solo artist. Ultimately as of 1989, Fältskog increasingly sought the seclusion of her private and heavily secured island Helgö, 25 km west of Stockholm.

Fältskog admitted to battling all sorts of anxieties and depression, aggravated by a couple of failed marriages, her mother committing suicide, and an affair with a Dutch forklift driver who turned out to be a creepy stalker.

Answer: New Zealand

Claire Mary Teresa Rawstron (1944) was just a few weeks old when she was adopted by Thomas Te Kanawa, a Maori, and his Irish wife. They renamed her Kiri Janette Te Kanawa.

Originally a teen pop star in her native country, Te Kanawa pursued a career as a soprano. By entering into and winning various contests, she was awarded a grant to study in London. Eventually, she shot to fame in 1971 after being cast as the Countess in "The Marriage of Figaro", which would lead to her involvement with the Royal Opera House Covent Garden.

She cemented her name as an international opera diva after singing at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, a performance witnessed by an estimated 600 million viewers. The following year she was created Commander of the British Empire.

In 2017, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa announced her retirement from public performances after a career that spanned almost five decades.

Answer: France

Édith Giovanna Gassion (1915 - 1963) had a rough life, which contrasted starkly with her immense fame and success.

Daughter of an acrobat and a saloon singer and raised by her grandmother who exploited a brothel in Normandy, Piaf became pregnant at age 17 by a courier from Paris. The baby died from meningitis two years later.

More bad luck followed. The nightclub owner who gave Piaf her first chance and nicknamed her "La Mome Piaf" or "Little Sparrow" was murdered soon after her debut. Piaf was suspected of co-conspiracy by the police, but was acquitted.

A professional boxer who was the love of her life - despite being married to another woman - died in a plane crash in 1949. Piaf never really recovered from this loss, even though she did marry twice after.

During the second world war, Piaf wrote her famous song "La Vie en Rose", on the success of which she built her international career. She became so popular that, when she died unexpectedly from an internal hemorrhage at age 47 in 1963, hundreds of thousands of fans gathered at her funeral in Paris and blocked the famous Père-Lachaise cemetery. Renowned crooner Charles Aznavour, who admitted he owed his success to Piaf, remarked that it was the only day since WWII that traffic in Paris had stopped.

Answer: Iceland

Born in Reykjavik in 1965, Björk Guðmundsdóttir is a multi-talented force of nature who likes to experiment across genre borders, both musically and visually. As such, she seems very hard to pinpoint. She displays her talents as singer, songwriter, actress (notably in "Dancer in the Dark" from Lars von Trier), record producer as well as DJ.

At age 11, Björk was already a platinum-selling recording artist in Iceland with her eponymous debut album on which her father accompanied her on guitar and which contained a mix of folk and pop songs, including an Icelandic version of the Beatles song "The Fool on the Hill". After a six-year stint with The Sugarcubes, Björk decided to continue as a solo artist in 1992. Just one year later, her first international album "Debut" was released after a collaboration with Nellee Hooper of Massive Attack fame. Despite a mixed reception (Rolling Stone magazine: "utterly disappointing, two stars out of five"), the album reached platinum in the US and in retrospect is regarded as one of the most iconic pop albums of the '90s.

She gets her musical inspiration from all over, with Joni Mitchell and Chaka Khan being her leading examples. But as indicated above, this is a non-US quiz, so I would be amiss if I didn't point out other inspirational figures for Björk in her own words:

"Funnily enough, with my favorite music like that, I don't understand the words. I really like fado singers like Amália Rodrigues, but I don't speak Portuguese. I really like Abida Parveen from Pakistan, but I don't understand a word she sings either." [Pitchfork, Jan 2015]

Answer: Canada

Roberta Joan Anderson (Alberta, 1943) contracted polio when she was nine and was sent to a Catholic hospital a hundred miles from home, where the nuns made it clear she would never walk again. Her father never visited, her mother only once. To comfort herself and others in the polio ward, Mitchell first began to sing. Following her first club performances at the Louis Real Coffeehouse in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in 1962, Mitchell sang in folk clubs around Canada before moving to the United States.

With her high, delicate voice and poetic lyrics, Mitchell became a symbol of the hippie movement with songs like "Woodstock" and "Big Yellow Taxi". However, with each new album, she ventured further into uncharted crossover territory of pop and jazz, dropping the pitch of her voice - courtesy of four packs of cigarettes per day.

On Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time, Mitchell is the highest-ranking female. She wrote and produced much of her own music and is highly regarded as a painter (having used her paintings as album covers).

Her private life has been eventful. Mitchell endured a secret pregnancy alone and in poverty, whilst continuing to perform nightly in coffee houses in Toronto. She gave birth in a hospital wing for unwed mothers and gave the baby girl up for adoption. Lovers came and went in her life, amongst whom Leonard Cohen, David Crosby, Graham Nash, James Taylor, and Chuck Mitchell, whose name she kept after their marriage. But she always remained a strongwilled, independent woman.

In 2015 was suffered a brain aneurysm, only to be be found three days later. It is unclear whether she will fully recover.

Answer: South Africa

When a female artist is granted the honorary title "Mama Africa", it is clear that you're dealing with a legend. Propelled from a Johannesburg township singing group to global celebrity, Miriam "Zenzi" Makeba (1931 - 2008) was - according to her obituary in the Guardian - "a natural and consummate performer with a dynamic vocal range and an emotional awareness that could induce the delusion of intimate contact in even the most impersonal auditorium". But she was much more than that.

From a young age, she experienced first hand the horrors of the apartheid system in South Africa. As her international fame grew, Makeba found herself increasingly empowered to take a political stand against the oppression in her home country. She gave various speeches for the special UN committee on apartheid and was the only performer at the inauguration of the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa in 1963. She was subsequently exiled by South Africa and moved to Guinea. In those days of growing black consciousness, Makeba became associated with radical activities in the civil rights movement and black power. In 1968, she married Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael, her fourth husband at the time.

She collaborated with Harry Belafonte, for which she earned a Grammy award, appeared along with Marilyn Monroe at the famous birthday celebration for John F Kennedy and worked with Paul Simon on his "Graceland" project. This resulted in some controversy, as many ANC members believed it went against the boycott of South Africa. It goes without saying that she was a prominent invitee at all the festivals and shows surrounding the ending of apartheid and the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990.

In 2005 she announced her retirement but her farewell tour was still ongoing when she collapsed on stage in Naples, Italy.

Answer: Thailand

Prior to her untimely death in 1992, Pumpuang Duangjan (real name: Ramphueng Chit-han, born 1961) had secured her place in music history as the queen of Luk Thung (which translates to "(song of a) child of the fields"), a sort of country music characterized by slow tempo and an expressive style of singing with lots of vibrato.

As a child of poor rural peasants, Pumpuang had only two years of primary education before she was forced to work in the fields as a sugar cane cutter in order to ease the family's plight. Although illiterate, she found it easy to memorize lyrics and was very successful in many local singing competitions around her hometown Suphanburi. In 1976, aged 15, Pumpuang was discovered by a band of visiting musicians who heard her sing and took notice. Soon after, her fame skyrocketed. Her lyrics were powerful and compelling stories about the hardships of the poor in Thailand, to which millions of Thai could relate. Pumpuang's lasting heritage is that she pioneered a crossover of Luk Thung and dance-ready electronic pop. In addition, she played in a number of movies.

Nicknamed Pueng, meaning "Bee", her life was the classic rags to riches story, but unfortunately, Pumpuang fell victim to unscrupulous managers and hangers-on, who took advantage of her and left her penniless. She tragically died in 1992, aged 30, when she couldn't even afford the hospital treatment she needed. Her death was massive news in Thailand with hundreds of thousands attending her funeral, including the Thai royal family.

Answer: Japan

known as "The Queen of Enka", Hibari Misora (born Katō Kazue, 1937 - 1989) was an award-winning Japanese singer and actress and regarded as a national treasure and cultural icon in Japan. Misora was the first woman in Japan to receive the People's Prize of Honor.

Misora's singing talent was recognized at a very early age and her father, a fishmonger, invested a substantial part of the family's savings in launching her career. She debuted at a concert hall in Yokohama when she was eight and, when she started recording at age twelve, changed her name to Hibari Misora, meaning "lark in a beautiful sky". Her first two singles were instantly successful, as her cheerful persona struck a chord with the Japanese people, desperate for a glimmer of hope and joy in the post-WWII era. Her success and fame were only marred by an attack by a deranged fan with hydrochloric acid in 1957 and accusations regarding her brother and his ties to the Japanese mafia.

A prolific artist, Misora has recorded around 1,200 songs and sold 68 million records at the time of her death, making her one of the most commercially successful music artists in the world. She also appeared in 160 movies. Her song "Kawa no nagare no yōni" was voted best Japanese song of all time and has been covered by many artists, including notable renditions by The Three Tenors and Teresa Teng.

Misora died of pneumonia in 1989, the same year that Japanese emperor Hirohito passed away. It could be argued that Misora was more widely mourned than the late occupant of the Chrysanthemum Throne.