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Life not that hard for young fado queen
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Vancouver Sun, Life not that hard for young fado queen >>
When she was very young, Portuguese fado singer Mariza used to sit on the stairs separating her family's apartment from her parents' restaurant. There was always a singer and guitarist entertaining downstairs, and the more she listened, the more she wanted to be that singer.
"I spent so much time sitting on those stairs," Mariza recalls during a telephone call from her home in Lisbon. "I told my father, 'I want to sing.' " She was five years old at the time.
Mariza started singing right away. Because she was so young, she and her father worked out a unique system for her to remember lyrics to songs.
"I didn't know how to read, so my father would draw cartoons on paper to help me learn the poems."
Certain memories of the restaurant have stayed with Mariza, now 27.
"I remember it was very small and very dark. There was lots of smoke. My mom used to send me home, because the ambience was not good for a child. But I used to sneak out and look through a little open door.
"I remember the sound of the Portuguese guitar. The singer would sing, and the Portuguese guitar would give answers to the voice."
When she was six, she made friends with a neighbourhood boy, Antonio Neto, who was learning guitar. She would sing with him at his house. They lost touch during their teen years, a period when Mariza was trying different kinds of music. When she returned to Portuguese music, primarily the fado form, she contacted Neto, and they started playing in bands together.
Antonio Neto has appeared on both of Mariza's recordings, and is a member of her touring band.
During her teens, she got away from fado and other Portuguese musical forms.
"When I was little, I used to listen to fado and bossa nova, because that's what my parents listened to at home. But when I got to school, my friends showed me different types of music, and for me it was, 'Wow. The musical world is completely different.' They opened my vision of music.
"So, I started singing jazz and blues. I tried these forms singing in clubs with bands, but always at the end of the night, if I felt we had right ambience, I would sing a fado."
Any Portuguese singer who performs fado (the term translates as "fate" in English) -- a musical tale-telling form that flourishes in Lisbon's cafes and contains elements of Argentine tango, American blues and Greek rembetiko, but with lyrics that reflect life's harder moments -- draws comparisons with the queen of fado, the late Amalia Rodrigues. Mariza feels these comparisons are wrong.
"People like to compare, and with me they compare us all the time. It is not fair. It's not fair for Amalia, because she was the diva. She was the biggest.
"But when they compare me to Amalia, they think of a woman 40 years old. [Rodrigues was born in 1920, and died in 1999. ] I'm not even 30, and I don't have that baggage of life yet.
"Those comparisons for me are a huge compliment, but for Amalia, I don't think so."
Critics have called Mariza's brand of fado a new form. She doesn't agree.
"I don't feel my fado is different. I feel I respect everything: the tradition, the roots, everything. I just give my point of view, and maybe that's why they say it's different."
Mariza performs Sunday night at the Mission Folk Festival, a three-day event which begins Friday at Fraser River Heritage Park. For more information, call 1-866-991-9899, or look online at www.missionfolkmusicfestival.ca/
-Marke Andrews 07/24/03
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