Featured Artist: Mariza

CD Title: Fado En Mim
Year: 2001
Record Label: World Connection / Times Square
Style: World Music

Review: Fado is a folk music from Portugal, a sort of plaintive folk-blues with undertones of Flamenco from neighboring Spain. This woman Mariza is a wonderful Fado singer - no, make that a wonderful singer, period. She could prob'ly sing from a Ukrainian phone book and it'd be a gloriously heartbreaking experience. Mariza has that elusive "It" quality that transcends mere language and dialect - like Edith Piaf did, like Rokia Traore and Salif Keita do, like Sinatra and Holiday at their peaks, along with Maura O'Connell and George Jones. And it's not "just" the beautiful, soulful, clear-as-a-bell quality and range of her voice - Mariza's knowledge of and feeling for blues and jazz clearly stakes her claim in the here-and-now, making Fado her own in the same way that Muddy Waters made the Blues his own. (And unlike many singers with great range, Ms. M never uses her technique in a facile, show-off-y manner - her voice serves the song, not herself.) The musical accompaniment consists mainly of immaculately picked acoustic guitar and judicious, impressionistic percussion - the musical so carries the breezes blown from The Moors, from North Africa and the Mediterranean. Although this smacks of hyperbole, in this case it fits: you just GOT to hear her.