Armando Zeferino Soares was a salesman from Praia Branca on the island of São Nicolau who, by his own account given to the newspaper A Semana, composed the melody of "Sodade" in the 1950s as a farewell to friends departing for São Tomé e Príncipe. He spent much of his life contesting rival claims to the song, a dispute Cape Verdean courts finally settled in his favor in December 2006 — sixteen years after Cesária Évora's 1992 recording had already turned it into the best-known morna in the world.