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Fado-Listic
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Mariza, Fado-Listic >>
Portuguese singer Mariza belts out the sad strains of fado By Bruce Willey
What would you do if your mate left you for another and your dog died and you lost your job and the fog came in for five days, clinging so tightly to the air it made you choke? Why, listen to fado music of course. It´s the only kind of music that might save you.
In happier moments of this collective, sometimes desperate existence, fado is also useful for conjuring lost loves back into your bed or bringing loved ones—living or dead—returning into your unsatisfied thoughts. Fado reeks of sadness and beautiful melody, making contemporary blues sound like a tired shade of indigo.
That´s fado in words. But like pain, you´ve really got to experience it, listen to it, until the word, which means destiny or fate in Latin, means nothing but a scratch on the bones. Elsewhere, the flesh and skin will shiver.
Fado is a Portuguese import from what is a slab of country perched on the edge of Spain. A place where the roiling Atlantic makes for plenty of homesick sailors and fishermen—not to mention their wives—who don´t just wax nostalgic, but indefatigably yearn with fado in their hearts. This yearning has a surname: suedade. It´s a word that in the music is broached as easily as “baby” is in the blues, and can be loosely defined as nostalgia for unrealized dreams or sentimental longing. Fado audiences know this well and have been known to boot many an aspiring fado singer off the stage if they feel the music is not authentic and soulful enough.
One of the better talents of the venerable, centuries-old fado tradition happens to be the fadista (female fado singer) extraordinaire Mariza, who plays the Rio Theatre on Sunday, Aug. 3 at the Rio Theatre. And she will most likely not be booted off the stage.
The young, 29-year-old, stylish interpreter of the fado tradition has played everywhere from the Hollywood bowl to small fado clubs in her hometown of Lisbon. She´s been singing fado music since before she could read (her father would draw small cartoons to convey the words and meaning) and has since taken fado deep into the souls of a worldwide audiences in just two recordings: “Fado em mim” (Fado and Me) and her latest, “Fado Curvo.”
Along the way she´s made a lot of people cry in a good way. Take this from her first album, a song called Chuva (Rain): “Things that are ugly in life/ leave us with no longings/ It´s only memories/ that make us cry or smile/ There are people who remain a part of us/ And become part of our own story/ while there are others/ Whose names we hardly remember.”
Sounds flat on newsprint, but through Mariza´s blessed vocal chords the music absolutely soars into the sad stratosphere. Besides, Mariza sings the lyrics in Portuguese, which have the effect of turning sentimental lyrics into truths.
“Fado is more than music,” she says from her tour bus while on the road somewhere on the East Coast. Why, she´s not sure. “It´s a feeling. Love, jealousy, happiness, death, joy, that type of thing.”
She says that when she is on stage she is able to give herself over to the music and feel the words she is singing. Unlike other fadistas who wear black shawls and stand motionless, communicating only with their hands and facial expressions, Mariza says she like to dance to the music and has lost the shawl in favor of a more contemporary look. And before each song she tries to explain the meaning of the song though she says her English isn´t very good.
But actually her English is very good and it´s obvious from the tone of her voice the diva is impatient with being asked the same old questions about fado. “Don´t you have the materials?” she says, referring to the press packet.
Traditionally, a fadista is accompanied by Portuguese guitar (a guitar that is like a small heart with 12 strings,” Mariza explains), an acoustic guitar and a bass. On both of Mariza´s CD´s she has modernized fado sound adding, on some of the songs, flourishes such as piano, percussion, trumpet and cello. While this might horrify a fado purist, it still very much sounds like the real thing to this untrained fado ear. Live, however, she plays with only three musicians in the traditional fado way.
“There isn´t a box that I go into to take emotion,” Mariza says, her cell phone cutting out. “No, I just do it. You feel it, the story I´m telling— everything.” 07/31/03 >> go there
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