Coladeira is the mid-tempo 2/4 dance song established on Cabo Verde's São Vicente and Santiago islands in the 1930s–40s. It is one of three Cabo Verdean core forms: coladeira dances mid-fast in 2/4, morna sits slow in 3, funaná drives fast in 2/4. The lineup is nylon-string guitar, cavaquinho (four-string small guitar), violin, sometimes clarinet or saxophone, and lead voice. Tempo runs 110–140 BPM with the second beat emphasised; melody carries the Portuguese-folk minor-and-major nostalgia inherited via Portuguese colonial rule. Lyrics are in Cabo Verdean Kriolu and cover love, gossip, and biting political satire. The 'passagem à Léza' half-step chromatic descent that B. Léza (1905–1958) imported from Brazilian samba became the harmonic signature of both coladeira and morna.

Morna was already formalised by the late nineteenth century when coladeira crystallised in the 1930s–40s as its faster, dance-oriented sibling on São Vicente. Mindelo — São Vicente's port — was a transatlantic coaling stop for British steamers, and its cultural crossroads absorbed Brazilian samba, Portuguese fado, and British dance music. B. Léza (born Francisco Xavier da Cruz) was the first-generation composer who wrote across both morna and coladeira, and his written scores still form the shared Cabo Verdean repertoire. Manuel de Novas (1938–2009) contributed the coladeira poetic canon, providing lyric material to multiple generations of singers. Cesária Évora's 1988 Lusafrica debut and her 1990s albums (including 'Miss Perfumado' 1992 and 'Cabo Verde' 1997) brought coladeira into international circulation alongside morna.

Lock onto the second-beat bass emphasis. Coladeira is written in 2/4, not 4/4, and the second beat (or, read as 4/4, the two and four) is where the bass punches — designed to align with the couple-dance's knee-flex. Then follow the cavaquinho's quarter-note strum and the nylon-string guitar's arpeggiated fills. On Cesária Évora's 'Cabo Verde' (1997), her weathered voice and Bau's restrained accompaniment show the form's ideal shape. B. Léza's passagem à Léza chromatic-descent harmony produces the characteristic emotional complexity: the harmony is melancholic while the rhythm is bright, and the two live simultaneously.

Cesária Évora's 'Cabo Verde' (1997) is the best starting point — choose the coladeira tracks and hear the ideal-form template. Then B. Léza's standards (like 'Lua Nha Testemunha,' 1955) across multiple singer generations, to hear how the compositions travel. From the younger generation, Mayra Andrade's 'Storia, Storia' (2010) represents her modern coladeira line, and Tcheka's 'Argui!' (2003) reworks the form on a single acoustic guitar.

The name derives most plausibly from Portuguese colar (to stick together / cling) — a reference to the tight partner-dance embrace. B. Léza's 'passagem à Léza' — a chord progression descending by half-steps through I–vii–bVII–bIII — sits in the same territory as bossa nova harmony and became Cabo Verdean music's signature. Lusafrica label founder José da Silva discovered Cesária Évora in 1988; without his production strategy, Cabo Verdean music would not occupy its current international position. Bau (Rufino Almeida), the guitarist behind Cesária Évora's recordings, is himself a foundational coladeira instrumentalist whose accompaniments shaped the genre's modern sound.