Cynthia Silva, center, dances to the Eleventh Island Band and singer Chachi Carvalho, her uncle, as she and others, including her mother, Luisa Silva, right, take in the music at the 34th annual Cape Verdean Independence Day festival at India Point Park in Providence Sunday.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

PROVIDENCE — For folks of Cape Verdean descent, July 5 is July 4.

Sunday was the 34th anniversary of Cape Verde’s achieving independence from Portugal, and droves celebrated with a noisy, bustling festival in India Point Park.

With a well-attended soccer game anchoring one end of the park, cars outnumbered parking spaces and spilled out as far as Gano Street seeking a place of automotive repose.

Much-amplified music pumped from a stage as people sprawled on grass in the sun or sought shade beneath trees, or walked around wearing shirts proclaiming “Cabo Verde.”

Yet in truth this annual event has grown into an international festival as much as a Cape Verdean one. There were lots of booths selling items with a definite African flair, not surprising since the inhabitants of the Cape Verdes are largely descended from Portuguese colonists and African slaves. And there is nothing remotely Cape Verdean about popcorn, clam cakes, Italian ice and Del’s Lemonade, all of which were represented.

There was even a booth selling oriental rugs.

In the inflated-toy category, Spongebob Squarepants seemed to be a hit, with outsize baseball bats, Red Sox and otherwise, a close second.

The aroma of grilled sausage and chicken lubricated the atmosphere, hastened along by a gusting breeze off the sparkling waters of the Seekonk River, where red channel markers tilted against their anchors in an ebb tide.

Current-event T-shirts are almost always a hot item. Sunday’s offerings included a variety of shirts declaring “Michael Jackson 1958-2009.” There were also buttons bearing Jackson’s image.

Barack Obama was another familiar decoration on T-shirts. One had images of Mr. Obama, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

One of the shirts depicted the president in a double-oh-seven pose, including sunglasses, with a big “Mission Accomplished” banner.

Cape Verde lies off the west coast of Africa. The island group was uninhabited when 15th-century Portuguese mariners colonized it, according to the CIA’s World Factbook.

The islands later became a center for the slave trade, and a way station for whaling and transatlantic shipping.

Because of emigration, the Cape Verdean diaspora is much larger than the current population of the islands.

tmorgan@projo.com