Portugal’s Mariza makes old-school fado cool

A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE
-By Bob Young
Mariza doesn’t just sing fado, the emotion-packed Portuguese song form. She gives this old-school music a new sense of cool.

World-music fans adore it, but her task is a bit trickier in Portugal, where a nasty whiff of fascism still surrounds fado.

"We've heard the stories and we're still trying to understand what happened," Mariza said in accented English from her home in Lisbon. "But I didn't live at that time. That was the old generation."

Long before the 33-year-old singer became the international phenom she is today, the traditional music she mines was abused as an implement of oppression by Portugal's fascist dictatorships.

For decades after the 1930s, fado lyrics had to be approved by censors so as not to undermine the reigning nationalist party line, and this haunting music—often compared to the blues— took on yet another layer of dark melancholy.

For Mariza and other young fado singers such as Cristina Branco, Misia and Katia Guerreiro, the history they're building on isn't political, but musical and cultural

"The fado of today is about the new generations, the new Portugal, while also gravitating towards some of the traditional things," said the singer, who appears Saturday at Berklee Performance Center. "Our music isn't connected to political history."

Mariza was born in the former Portuguese African colony of Mozambique, in 1974, the year Portugal's fascist regime fell. By the time she moved to Portugal and was a young girl growing up in a working-class port neighborhood in Lisbon, fado's reputation worldwide was dented and dusty.

In Portugal itself, the black-shawled fado legend Amalia Rodrigues reigned supreme, and to this day the late singer is a revered figure there. While Mariza is a student of fado's past—she sang at Rodrigues' funeral in 1999— she's unshackled by creaky tradition.

From her appearance (short, platinum-blond hair and colorful clothes) to the unconventional instrumentation she adds to her band (trumpets, cellos, African percussion) to the company she keeps (a duet with Sting at the 2004 Summer Olympics), Mariza is performing songs of love, love lost and hope for the new millennium.

You can hear it on her new live album, "Concerto em Lisboa," and see her in action in striking concert footage on a companion DVD, "Mariza and the Story of Fado," a revealing look at how fado became Portugal's national musical treasure.

The feelings of fado—which means fate— she evokes are all there. Her rich contralto conjures up yearning, resignation and intense emotion, but unlike some of the darkest traditional fado, there's celebration, too. When her voice soars and the strings swell, optimism trumps despair.

"Fado is the way I express my feelings, my way of seeing the world and changing cultures," Mariza said. "I grew up in the middle of the most traditional fado singers, but I have my own way of expressing the music. I'm half-African and half-Portuguese and that's influenced what I do. It’s my own perspective on life."

Mariza, at Berklee Performance Center, Saturday at 8pm. Tickets: $28-$40; 617-876-4275.