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A Husky Voice and a Flair for Melodrama
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New York Times, A Husky Voice and a Flair for Melodrama >>
By KELEFA SANNEH
Over the past few years, a 29-year-old singer named Mariza
has helped repopularize fado, the tear-jerking Portuguese
genre. Her approach is counterintuitive: instead of
reinventing fado for modern listeners, she delights in the
music's melodrama.
On May 9 at Town Hall in Manhattan, Mariza entertained an
appreciative audience of fado aficionados and novice
listeners, offering brief history lessons between the
songs.
Although Mariza grew up singing fado, she spent time
singing jazz and bossa nova before returning to the genre
in the late 1990's. Her new album, ``Fado Curvo'' (Times
Square), bears traces of her past musical lives, and she
sang ``O deserto,'' a new song, in the gentle, husky voice
of a jazz balladeer.
Mainly, though, she embraced the role of old-fashioned fado
diva, leaning into heavy, sobbing vocal phrases that
contrasted with the bright, sprightly sound of a Portuguese
guitar.
She made sure to balance her approach. After a particularly
bathetic stanza, she would sometimes smile and bat her
eyelids at the audience; she followed the mournful ``O
silencio da guitarra'' with an announcement that ``Fado is
not always melancholic,'' and then a flirtatious version of
``Maria Lisboa,'' which conflates civic pride with courtly
lust.
Mariza usually addressed the crowd in English, even when
she was asking ``the Portuguese people to sing, if they
wish.'' She spent some time getting the Anglophones to sing
along, too. When she jokingly offered to let everyone sing
the translated lyrics, instead, a hallfull of people
bellowed, ``Embroidery!''
Although Mariza's voice is easily big enough to fill up a
concert hall, her performance might have been even more
effective in a more casual, convivial environment. There
were two brief sets and three one-song encores; no one
would have complained if the spaces between songs had been
filled with the clinking of glasses and the low hum of
conversation.
As it happens, a few fans were able to see Mariza in just
such a setting the night before, at Alfama, a Portuguese
restaurant in the West Village.
Accompanied by her guitarists and singing without a
microphone, she worked the room as if her rent depended on
it, belting out sentimental songs while patrons shouted
encouragement and drank red wine.
05/15/03 >> go there
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