The sultry singer Mariza is making waves around the and it is not just because of her marcel-curled platinum blonde hair. Not so quietly, the 32-year-old is revolutionizing the traditional Portuguese style known as fado, a form often likened to the blues and to tango. Her third album, "Transparente," produced by Brazilian legend Jacques Morelenbaum, comes out Aug. 9 in the United States via Times Square Records. On it, her beguilingly dark voice oozes with pain and a deep yearning to break out of solitude, belying her youth with old- soul knowledge. U.S. fans will get to see for themselves when she starts a tour of the States in October.

Q: What is fado?

A: Fado is music of the poor. Like any kind of urban music, it lives and breathes and changes like the city it comes from, so my fado sounds different than fado that they sang in cafes at the end of the 19th century. In the poetry of fado, you sing about melancholy, death, fear, sadness, love, lost love, jealousies, happiness. Everything is there.

Q: Fado has had strong resurgence in the past few years. What caused its decline in the first place?

A: Unfortunately, it's a style still strongly associated in many people's minds with [prime minister Antonio de Oliveira] Salazar's dictatorial regime of Portugal. For nearly 40 years, the regime used fado to make Portugal look good. So when the regime fell in 1974, most cultured people didn't want to have anything to do with fado. So fado was relegated to the most traditional neighborhoods.

Q. How did you learn fado?

A: Although I was born in Mozambique, I grew up in very traditional Lisbon neighborhood, and I started to sing fado when I was 5. I learned fado not from records, but by listening to old people in my neighborhood sing the classic songs. Those people are the real heroes of fado; they kept singing it through all those years.

Q: What comes first for you, the poetry or the music?

A: For me, poetry is the first impulse. I always travel with books of poetry. After I find poems that resonate with me, with who I am and how I feel, I find composers to set these texts to music. I can't perform something that I don't feel.

Q: Does performing come easily to you?

A: No. I often feel very vulnerable onstage. You fight with your fears and emotions when you sing, but at the same time you have to give yourself to the audience, and you have to receive from them as well. Sometimes, I hide deeper and deeper behind the shawl I wear while I'm singing, because it's all the armor I have.

Q: On July 2, you performed at the "Africa Calling" event in Cornwall, England, as part of Live 8. What was that experience like?

A: We had mostly African artists, so we didn't get much publicity. Our stage was the "poor stage" at Live we didn't have someone like Beyonce, Elton John or Stevie Wonder. I loved being there, I would still rather have performed there than on one of the main stages. For me, "Africa Calling" was the real Live 8.