MUSIC ARTIST: MARIZA
Mariza: YouTube
Singing the Portugese Blues
The New Queen of Fado
Mariza's CD "Fado Curvo" has been playing constantly since
we received it yesterday. These songs are gorgeous. Audrey Regan
After the release of her first album, "Fado em Mim" (Fado and Me), Mozambique-born Mariza (she was raised in Portugal), took her intriguing voice and inimitable Goth-Diva persona on the road. She sold out concert halls from Berlin to Bangkok. She is thirty-four years old and she has only just begun. Her second album, "Fado Curvo", was released in the United States in 2003.
Fado is a form of balladry that has been unique to Portugal for centuries. You recognize it by the hum of the 12-stringed Portugese guitar; by the female singers dressed completely in black, draped material. Fado is sad--even mournful. It is sung in operatic tones that are filled with longing. Mariza calls it "the Portugese blues".
As a child, Mariza sang fado in her Mouraria neighbourhood in Lisbon, with her father drawing small cartoons to help her remember the lyrics. As a young adult, she began to sing with jazz bands in Lisbon but those musical evenings always evolved into fado and, eventually, a local club owner convinced her to sing only fado, and to do so on a regular basis. Singing at a commemorative concert for the late, renowned queen of fado, Amália Rodrigues, Mariza attracted national attention and, with the help of Rodrigues's former guitarist, Jorge Fernandez, she recorded "Fado em Mim". "I did it just for fun," Mariza says, laughing, "I sang fados I knew from my childhood and I was surprised at the reaction I received." She did not expect to be making tours, to be giving interviews, to be winning one award after another.
Mariza's cropped hair is styled into finger-waves and dyed platinum blonde. Her clothing is crafted by avant garde designers. She is, in many ways, a pop diva. And now, that she has become famous in Europe and Asia, she wants to become the world ambassador for fado music. Fado, she claims, is not as much music as it is emotion. Usually, fado is sung in small, smokey taverns with a clientele indulging in lots of local, red wine. The troupe is comprised of two guitarists - one Portugese and the other acoustic and there is one female singing.
Fado music evolved in the beginning of the nineteenth century, mixing Portugese poeticism with two cultural forms, ie: the lundu and the fofa -- common among Lisbon's African population, with Lisbon's Brazilian, Arab, and Jewish populations throwing elements into the stew. "Some want to believe fado came from slaves and then went to Brazil, other ones want to believe the fado came from sailors, and other ones want to believe, but this is really wrong I think, that fado came from the kings and nobility," says Mariza, who is so drawn to the music's history that she plans to help produce a documentary on the subject later this year. "But that for me is wrong, because fado came from the streets."
"Fado Curvo" with the title track of the same name, is produced by Carlos Maria Trindade. It is more lively than the restraint normally exercised in this art form. Portugese and acoustic guitar still accompany Mariza's soulful voice, but the CD also has original instrumentation not normally found on a fado record.
For instance, on "Retrato", there are cello and piano melodies. On "O Deserto" one hears Miguel Gonçalves's muted trumpet. "O Deserto" sounds like Miles Davis doing Sketches of Portugal, rather than Sketches of Spain. There are 12 tracks on "Fado Curvo", all of them offering up spontaneous sound. It was recorded live but in stages, to prevent the music losing its soul. It is sung without thinking. Working in studios with computers has, therefore, been an incredible challenge for Mariza.
Mariza will soon be embarking on a North American tour, defining this art form, paying homage to fado without being bound by it.
