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The debut album from Portugal's Mariza found her hailed as the great hope of fado music, the heir of the legendary fadista Amália Rodrigues. Good as it was, it wasn't world-class. But with her sophomore effort, Fado Curvo, she's fulfilled her potential and made a record that deserves to be called brilliant.
On the first album I did a record for fun and friends," she explained. "With this one I felt a responsibility, that if I was going to do a second album, it must be more like me. So I researched our biggest Portuguese poets. I changed producers, and talked with him about doing a second album and my ideas about fado. I said that I would like to have something more organic, and I think we did it."
The change is apparent on listening, less tentative, and frequently full-throated. Put simply, it's more mature.
"Over the last year I've grown up a lot, and I think you can feel it. I had about 30 poems, and I had to choose which ones to sing. So I chose the ones with an identification with me. So they show more of myself, more of my soul. They really touch me, and I think they have something to do with me. That's why I think this record is more like me. I also told the producer that I didn't like to be in the studio. It's very hard for me to be closed in and to have to sing. He understood me very well. He thinks fado is a very sentimental music; if you keep repeating it in a studio (doing take after take), it'll become mechanical, not organic. It won't have the fooling. So we agreed to do no more than three takes on any song. You can feel that my voice isn't so clean sometimes, sometimes you hear the strings on the guitar. I fell in love with this record more than the first one, it's more natural. It's really hard to have your own sound; with this modern technology you can do everything. But we didn't want to work too much with computers, and I think that was correct."
It's not, however, a strictly traditional fado record. Piano and trumpet are apparent, and one one track, a cello gives almost a chamber sound to the music. Like other young fadistas, Mariza has stretched the definition of the music, although she insists that "I don't listen to other new fadistas - I usually listen to the older ones, because I need to go to the roots. I listen to a lot of different types of music."
The success of the last record meant a lot of work for her, perhaps more than she'd anticipated, as "last year we played 130 concerts, and this year we're doing 160. We've signed a licensing deal with EMI in Europe, and they're working with this album, so I'm working hard to promote as well as play. It was hard last year, but it's a little easier now, as we have more material to choose from for concerts. But we had to push the recording into December."
During 2002 she became more than another rising fadista, she was anointed as a world music star, which was confirmed when she won a Radio 3 World Music Award. But fame has left her a little uneasy.
"Sometimes I felt scared," she admitted. "Sometimes I felt strange. And sometimes I don't recognize the things they said about me. You feel like you just sing. But it's a huge compliment, because people are trying to understand what I'm doing and they like it. Receiving the award was fantastic, but now they ask what it's done. I think it brings more responsibilities to make people understand what I'm really doing. More people are going to notice my music. But singing is what I want to do. I never expect to receive anything, so everything that comes is a big surprise. Just let me sing!"
The visual image of the Mozambique-born singer has helped separate her from other Portuguese singers. She's eschewed the dark hair and black clothes normally associated with fado. Instead, her colorful clothes and careful blonde 'do have made her stand out, although she noted that "now in Portugal everybody does that! It's nothing strange any more." The ideas for her clothes and style came from friends. "When I started singing fado, they brought me beautiful dress to wear. One day I appeared on television and everything started. It's just me, I love fashion, and they were my friends, and they helped me. Now everybody knows my dresses and my hair. But I did it because I like it, not to be commercial or to be different. I just feel good like that. I love colors onstage, maybe because of my African roots. I love to feel pretty. I do have one black dress. That's just because, in the north of Portugal, on her wedding day, a woman wears black with lots of gold - rings, bracelets, earrings. So I asked my friend if he'd like to make that type of dress for me."
Fado Curvo will confirm her status as a leading fadista. One thing she wont be doing for a while is looking ahead to a third disc.
"I have to be habituated to the second one first. Maybe in two years I'll think about the next one, but I don't know what it'll be. I'm researching the roots of fado, so maybe it'll have something to do with that."
