Charismatic Mariza has sparked a stylish revival of Portugal’s national music back home, and now gives it a global twist
After Portuguese fado star Mariza made her debut album independently, she went around Lisbon looking for a label to sign and promote her. It seems amazing now that, despite her extraordinarily passionate and powerful voice, she was turned down by record-company suits for being out of fashion—and a tad too miserable.
“The response was ‘Sorry, but fado doesn’t sell. Nobody wants to listen to this music. It’s a little bit down,’ that type of thing,” says Mariza, reached on a tour bus somewhere between Missouri and Wisconsin. “For 20 years they didn’t have a successful fado album. Now everyone wants to have fado artists.”
Much of that turnaround is due to the platinum-haired diva. Since releasing Fado em Mim (Fado in Me) in 2001, Mariza has not only helped spark a revival of Portugal’s national music back home, she’s brought fado to millions of new listeners around the world who are captivated by the bittersweet beauty of the songs and her soulful, playful voice. Mariza has performed to sold-out houses in London’s Royal Albert Hall, Sydney’s Opera House, and New York’s Carnegie Hall; she performed a duet with Sting at the Athens Olympics in 2004; and she received a Grammy nomination last year for her fourth studio album, Terra (Earth).
The international plaudits are deserved. Mariza—who comes to the Chan Centre for the Performing Arts this Saturday (April 18) with a five-piece band—is a charismatic artist, with a rare ability to get under the skin of her songs. She’s found a balance between maintaining respect for Lisbon’s fado heritage and taking it further, creating extraordinary new hybrids with Brazilian, Cape Verdean, flamenco, Cuban, and other world-music traditions.
Mariza’s natural elegance and flair for wearing gorgeous gowns have made her a fashion icon. Yet the 35-year-old diva is also a scholar who’s researched fado for many years. While she doesn’t write songs herself, she carefully selects lyrics and music for her repertoire. “I’m always researching,” says Mariza with a laugh. “I’m always working; I don’t stop.”
One of the latest fruits of this labour is the impassioned “Recurso” on Terra. “The words are by David Mourão-Ferreira, who was one of the most important Portuguese poets,” says Mariza. “I found them, written by hand and never published, in the Museu do Fado in Lisbon. I asked a friend of mine to write music for it. A great deal of my work is done at home—my living room has 80 or 90 books of poetry, papers, and things I’ve been looking at.”
Terra features a number of tradition-based fado songs, not all of which are dark-hued or down-tempo. On the jaunty “Rosa Branca”, Mariza sings of a woman with a rose who dances so much that the petals scatter, ending with the question “If you love roses so much, why don’t you love me?” On the gently melancholic “Al-fama”, she evokes the historical Lisbon neighbourhood that’s one of the birthplaces of fado—a maze of old streets, twisting alleyways, and passages sweeping down steeply to the Tagus River. Its lyrics translate (according to sleeve notes) as: “Closed in its disenchantment/Alfama’s scent is of yearning/Alfama’s scent is not fado/Its scent is of people, of solitude/of a saddened silence/That knows sorrow with its bread.”
Mariza’s tastes and talents as a contemporary fadista are channelled beautifully by Terra’s Spanish producer, Javier Limón, who helmed the 2004 world-music hit Lagrimas Negras with Cuban pianist Bebo Valdés and flamenco singer El Cigala. “Javier was one of the people I was thinking of working with for the album, and when we met in Madrid over dinner and talked about music, we really connected. So I invited him to Lisboa and we went to some of the fado houses, very traditional places, a little bit underground. He’s also a great guitarist and played with some of the fado musicians, and I felt like ‘This is the person.’ ”
Limón plays on several of Terra’s tracks, including the flamenco-suffused “Pequeñas Verdades”, which he wrote for Mariza. He also paired her voice with that of rising Afro-Spanish star Concha Buika, one of several guests on the album. On “Fronteira”, legendary piano player Chucho Valdés gives the traditional Portuguese folk rhythms a sprightly Afro-Cuban flavour. Brazil’s Ivan Lins wrote and plays piano on the languid and jazzy “As Guitarras”.
For the magnificent morna “Beijo de Saudade” (“Kiss of Yearning”), Mariza is joined by husky-voiced Cape Verdean veteran Tito Paris. “The song is by one of Cape Verde’s greatest poets, B. Leza, who moved to Lisbon from the islands [off the west coast of Africa]. He wrote that song because he was very ill, and knew he wouldn’t return to his homeland. It’s very moving.”
Following seven years of hard touring for Mariza, Terra was seven months in the making and drew from her journeys. “My intention was to show to the people who have supported me what I saw as an artist, a person, and a woman,” she explains. “As you travel you feel the heartbeat of a country. So many different cultures, sounds, musicians, rhythms influenced me to do the album. But at the same time, I didn’t forget my roots. So it’s like having my feet in Portugal while at the same time travelling the world.”
04/16/09 >> 
