By August Kleinzhahler

It's time to take a break in our worldwide CD shopping tour and return to the old lair here in the Golden State to check out what's been collecting on my desk.  One can search for musical goodies both far and wide and find all manner of treasure in the process, but sometimes, sometimes they simply arrive through the mail slot with a small thump.

I'd be an ingrate and a liar face if I didn't confess that the best music that comes my way through the mail, nine times out of ten, is courtesy of Dmitri Vietze and his Rock Paper Scissors operation  (rockpaperscissors.com), a distributor of assorted world music labels.  Log on: there are plenty of treats to be had.

The very best Dmitri has sent my way the past couple of years is two discs by a young Portuguese fado sensation, a woman who goes by the name of Mariza.  For all the hype generated by the arrivals of various American and foreign phenoms, for my money Mariza is the most talented and exciting female star to appear on the scene in some years.

Of course, my enthusiasm is colored by my love for the mournful Portuguese folk form, with its particular conventions of form and expression.  Also, I love the Portuguese guitar, a relation of the Arabic sitar and English lute, with its curious pear shape, 12 metal strings, and unusual tuning, the principal accompanying instrument for the fado singer, often supported by the classical (Spanish-style guitar and bass).  I have enjoyed the good fortune of hearing first-rate fado live in both Lisbon (Lisboa) and here in America, and I was moved and delighted by the music on both occasions.  But I sure as hell would penny up some serious dollars to hear Mariza live.

Fado is emotional music, often compared with our own blues or the Spanish flamenco our Argentine tango for its level of emotional intensity.  Fado, more than the others, excepting the blues is preoccupied with longing (saudade) and loss.  Not the stuff to start the day off with; that is, unless you're in rough shape already.

The female performers in my limited experience and study, tend to be mature women, not young dollies.  The manner of performance is mournful, soulful, demure, designed to convey real gravity and depth of feeling.  This tone or atmosphere of performance is complemented by the outfit: black dress and black shawl, the hemline and cut not at all provocative.  Which is not to say fado isn't intensely sensual even sexual music.  I find it exceptionally so.

The Portuguese tend to be a modest race, interior and understated: quite opposite to their neighbors the Spanish, or the Brazilians, with whom they share a language.  If one contrasts fado with flamenco, say, or samba, the difference among the cultures inaudible.

Mariza, at least her stage persona, is not at all modest, interior, or understated.  Although loaded with soulfulness and able to deliver with the emotional weight of her black clad fellow fadistas, Mariza is ultra flash.  She wears her hair close-cropped, platinum-blond hair in tight waves and favors shimmery, clinging, low-cut gowns.  Her hair is decidedly pop diva- more Celine Dion, say, than Amalia Rodrugues, the legendary fadista with whom she's often compared.

Fado, although popular in Portugal, here it's the preeminent and most distinctive traditional music and identified with the national character (as flamenco is with Spain or tango with Argentina), has never enjoyed a broad audience outside of Portugal.  That is, until Mariza came along.  Winner of the recent prize for best European act in the BBC Awards for World Music, Mariza packs rock and pop venues from London to Bangkok.  Her first album, Fado em mim, sold over 100,000 copies worldwide, a figure previously unimaginable for a fado performer.

So what's the deal with Mariza Nunes? What has she got that the other fadistas don't?  How has she succeed, as non before her had managed to, in getting her act out of the small rather inbred fado scene of Lisboa and onto the world stage?  Part of it, surely, is her glamour and pizzazz: her costumes, her hair, and what by all accounts is a very exciting stage set.  The traditional fadista stands almost stock still, occasionally shrugging her shoulders for dramatic effect.  Mariza, in her act, decidedly does not stand still; she moves sensually to the music.  "I can't be a stick," the performer asserts.  "I feel music and express myself."

Part of the allure in her unconventional take on a form that relies heavily on traditional conventions.  Mariza admits jazz inflections and pop elements into her material and for the most part succeeds in hybridizing her fado artfully and unobtrusively.  The artist freely acknowledges outside influences, specifically gospel, soul, and rock.  Mariza was, in fact, born in Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, and came to Portugal with her parents at the age of three.  Her Portuguese mother has African and Indian roots.  So perhaps it's not terribly surprising, her interest in African-American music.

Mariza began singing fado early, before she could read, and by the age of five would join in the singing in her parents' restaurant in the Mouraria district of Lisbon, an older area of the city I know well, near the Castelo do Sao Jorge (Castle of St. George), in the shadow of which I lived for a couple of months 30 (gulp) years ago, a couple of years before Mariza was born, in fact.  Her parents encouraged her in her singing and would drag her around to assorted fado houses, where she'd soak up the music and the culture behind it.  As a teenager, she lost interest in the music, finding it rather old fashioned.  But in 1996 while living and performing in Brazil- soul, jazz, Brazilian style music- she encountered in her audiences people who insisted she sang fado, know she was Portuguese.  This experience seems to have rekindled a passion for the music in Mariza.

But more than anything else, this singer has a remarkable gift.  Some singers (Anita O'Day comes to mind) get the most out of a limited gift, but Mariza has a huge, magnificently expressive voice, and it s a voice and technique beautifully suited to the demands of fado, a music that is clearly in her bones.  Unlike her great predecessors, like Amalia Rodrigues, Mariza has a first rate, international class producer behind her; in these two sensational recordings, she enjoys 21st century digital values that fadistas a generation before would never have imagined.

Of the two discs, I prefer the first, Fado em mim, but both discs are dynamite.  Being old fashioned myself and having enjoyed traditionally fado for so many years, I prefer Mariza when she's doing fado more of less straight.  One track in particular on that disc moved me more than the others: "O Gente Da Minha Terra" (People of My Land"), just Mariza accompanied by Portuguese guitar.  Very simple.  Could have been performed and sung just like that 150 years ago.

You're not going to believe me, but the phone just rang, and it was a Rep from Rock Paper Scissors who informed me that Mariza will be appearing in San Diego on July 31 at Humphrey's by the Bay. Don’t miss it.