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Concert Review
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Washington Post, Concert Review >>
-by Mark Jenkins
Opening their set Tuesday evening at the Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, singer-guitarist Sara Tavares and her three accompanists quickly sat down and began the pattering guitar lines and strolling rhythms of "Lisboa Kuya."
The Afro-Portuguese musician remained seated until she played the show-closing "One Love," but her music stood up long before that. By the time Tavares reached her third number -- "Balancê," the title song of her U.S. debut -- the syncopation had become more assertive and the lyrics had slipped in and out of ecstatic scatting.
If this was lounge music, it was meant for a lounge with a dance floor. Born in Lisbon to Cape Verdean parents, Tavares speaks English well, as she demonstrated when explaining her songs or organizing audience singalongs. (The crowd's early efforts were "too polite," she chided politely.) English also makes fleeting appearances in her lyrics, which are mostly in Portuguese or Cape Verdean Crioulo, the polyglot idiom of slaves brought to those islands from various West African countries.
A characteristic title is "Bom Feeling," a percolating ode to "good vibes" that made its case as much with vocalese as words. To start the latter tune, Tavares sang against her own taped vocals, a gimmick similar to, but more striking than, the intro to the recorded version.
The singer-songwriter has clearly rethought some of her material, and the live renditions were often an improvement. If Tavares and her three-piece band couldn't simulate "Balancê's" lusher sound, they had no difficulty generating good vibes. 01/25/07 >> go there
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