The feelings of life

WORLD Beat

The Portuguese fado star Mariza dos Reis Nunes returned to the stage at the Thai Cultural Centre on October 8 to weave her musical magic with a spectacular show of fado music. Performing in front of HRH Princess Sirindhorn, the world's leading fado singer and her five-member band romped through a set of 17 songs that included traditional and modern fado, morna from Cape Verde and even the jazz standard originally written for Ella Fitzgerald, Cry Me A River.

Mariza and her five-member band romped through a set of 17 songs that included traditional and modern fado.

In an interview, Mariza explained that the haunting sound of the fado, which has Portuguese, Arabic, African and Brazilian roots, was originally sung to tell stories about sailors. She is quick to counter the popular notion that fado is a sad music. "Fado is not sad ... fado brings the feelings of life." And in introducing the song Meu Fado Meu (My Own Fado) to the audience she said that the song was about destiny or fate, explaining that, "We are a bit melancholic but not sad. This is a sweet destiny."

Mariza is unusual for a fadista in that she was born in Mozambique in southern Africa - her father is Portuguese and her mother African - and moved to live in the traditional neighbourhood of Mouraria in Lisbon. As her father ran a taverna (the best place to experience fado), she soaked up the ambiance of the fado world from an early age and was singing fado by the age of five. She lived with her family in Brazil for a while and began singing rock, pop, soul and jazz with various bands.

Her father was the inspiration for her first album, Fado Em Mim. "He told me that he would come and see me perform when I sang fado, so I started to sing more and more fado. I recorded the first album for my dad," she said. For a fado album at that time, her debut sold an amazing 100,000 copies and launched her careers as a fadista both in Portugal and internationally.

Mariza likes to draw comparisons between fado and the blues and she seems to have followed the old blues adage of not repeating the past but taking the music on, developing it further. "When I started, the fado scene was fixed," she explained, "but the fado I do is my fado, my personality goes into the music more and more. I don't think there are any barriers to music. We shouldn't have taboos."

Her new album, Terra, continues the theme of developing fado, with influences drawn from African, Spanish and jazz. Mariza said that the album is the result of her travels over the past decade during which see has promoted fado around the world.

And on stage Mariza brought a bigger band for this tour that augmented the traditional fado triumvirate of Portuguese guitar, Spanish guitar and acoustic bass guitar with drum kit/percussion and piano/trumpet. The addition of the trumpet was a masterstroke, as the muted sound of trumpet complemented Mariza's haunting vocals and the "crying" sound of the Portuguese guitar.

Mariza entered the stage in dramatic fashion, wearing a flowing black gown and black opera gloves. She quickly established a rapport with the audience, winning them over with her charming stage manner. She then breezed through a 17-song set that featured two encores.

As she sang Mariza moved around the stage using sweeping, dramatic hand gestures. Sometimes she moved to the front of stage to sing softly to those lucky ones sitting in the front row. Throughout the performance, the Portuguese guitar followed and answered Mariza's haunting voice with its unique "crying" tone. Just how the guitarist could be that good at the age of 20 is a mystery to me, particularly given that a fado singer or musician must learn a repertoire of 300 songs.

I liked each song performed but if I had to pick standouts from this show, it would have to be Mariza's own personal favourite, Primavera, in which her powerful extraordinary voice moved through a melancholic intro to a dramatic, emotional crescendo that left everyone in the audience breathless. I also liked the stirring instrumental Guitarra, which had me thinking of the "Harry Lime theme" from the movie, The Third Man.

But the best was left until last. For the second and final encore, Mariza turned off the microphones and electric pickups and put a chair at the front of the stage for two guitarists to rest their legs. "Imagine you are in Lisboa," she said, "You see a taverna and as you enter the fado begins ..." She then proceeded to fill the hall with her voice and the musical magic that is fado. I said of her show three years ago that it was one of the best concerts I'd seen in Bangkok. Well, this one was even better.

Correction: My last column I gave the wrong address for Dasa Bookstore, which has relocated to between Sukhumvit road, sois 26 and 28.

This column can be contacted at: Clewley.john@gmail.com