No language barrier for Latinas

3 vocalists deliver the flavor of their South American nations

COURTNEY DEVORES

Special to the Observer

American listeners may not understand Mariana Montalvo's poetic lyrics, but the Chilean singer says the feeling in her music transcends the language barrier.

"Music itself is a language," she said in a phone interview from her tour bus Sunday morning. "When I hear beautiful music in English, if it is emotional, I don't need to understand the words."

Montalvo is part of the "Latinas: Women of Latin America" tour presented by the international music label Putumayo. She performs Thursday at the Porter Center for Performing Arts in Brevard, along with Brazil's Belô Velloso and Colombia's Totó La Momposina.

Montalvo said audiences at recent shows have been about 90 percent English-speaking.

"The first song in the show is a very deep song, and I don't explain it," she said of "India Song," about a mysterious woman, from the Putumayo CD "Women of Latin America," released last month. "I hope that the music will touch people. I think so, because it's (had) a good reception."

Each of the vocalists on the tour hail from different areas of South America, and their styles vary dramatically.

Montalvo mixes the modern with traditional. Her songs are steeped in nuevo canción, the Chilean protest folk movement that gained prominence in the 1970s. Many of her lyrics are drawn from poems penned by prominent Latin American writers. She also incorporates the influence of her current home of Paris, where she has lived in exile for 30 years. On her album "Cantos Del Alma," Montalvo covers French singer Serge Gainsbourg's "Your Coffee Color." But she said she always keeps her home country in her mind and in her music.

The lively La Momposina, who performed at Gabriel García Márquez's Nobel Prize reception, has been combining elements of African, Spanish and Native American music through her percussive cumbia style since 1968.

Velloso, the youngest of the trio, grew up in Bahia, a region of Brazil rich in African influences. She is the niece of Brazilian music legends Maria Bethânia and Caetano Veloso. (Velloso's last name is spelled differently from her uncle's.) Her Brazilian-style pop is informed by traditional genres including bossa nova and samba.

Although the three women had never met before the tour began, they share an energy on stage, according to Montalvo.

"At the end of the show, we found something to sing together," she said. "That's the connection. We are from the same continent. You can feel this."

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