By Sam McDonald

A 29-year-old singer from Lisbon, Portugal, is helping to revive the dramatic style of music called fado.

The style has been described as Portugal's blues, its tango or its flamenco.

"They all stand on emotions," said Mariza, who at the beginning of her career was being compared to one of fado's major figures, Amalia Rodrigues.

Mariza performs tonight at the American Theatre in Hampton.  "Fado is an emotional music full of passion, sorrow, jealousy, grief and often satire," she said in a press release.

What does fado sound like?  It's gentle, soulful Portuguese singing combined with easy, swinging acoustic guitar.  Its' a sound that’s ancient- but also timeless.  Lyrical themes run the gamut of intense feelings, but a special brand of loneliness or yearning-called "saudade"- is central to the music's mood.  The atmosphere of longing is tied to Lisbon's seafaring past.

If fado sounds a bit gloomy, that's only part of the package.  "Paradoxically, a visit to a fado house is distinctly uplifting, thanks to the music's profound expression of human suffering, and the beauty of voice and guitar in such intimate surroundings," wrote Stephanie Debere, a reporter for the Independent, an English newspaper.

Born in Mozambique, Mariza arrived in Lisbon as a baby when her family relocated there.  They settled in a part of the city considered the birthplace of fado.  She remembers, as a child, standing in the doorway of her parents' restaurant listening to the neighborhood's distinctive music. 

"I could sing nothing at the time", she told National Public Radio in May.  "I was really small and the only things I see was a dark ambiance and a lady singing...the sound of Portuguese guitar was really fantastic...I think my first passion was that."

Still, as a young musician Mariza experimented with other styles- rock, blues, bossa nova -before releasing the CD "Fado em Mim" last year.  The disc brought her international attention and paved the way for her most recent disc, "Fado Curvo."

Mariza's return to fado was natural progression, she told NPR.

"You know in my traditional neighborhood, I used to sing for my neighbors and for my friends there. But at high school my friends start asking me what I do in my free time, and I start saying 'Oh, I used to sing fado,' and they start laughing and saying fado is for old people.

"I start singing other things... some clubs, I have bands.  But you know something?  At the end of the night in those places, if I felt we had the ambience to sing a fado, I used to sing...It's not like coming home.  Its' like being yourself.  Sometimes I finish and when fado begins, I'm so in love and I belong to that music.