Eugénio Tavares was a self-taught poet from the island of Brava — he also spent a decade in the Cape Verdean emigrant community of New Bedford, Massachusetts — whose Creole-language mornas, written around the turn of the 20th century, are credited with giving the genre its enduring romantic vocabulary of sea, parting, and homesickness. His posthumous collection Mornas: Cantigas Crioulas (1932) remains a foundational morna songbook, and Cape Verdean cultural sources count Cesária Évora among the later generation of singers who performed his compositions.