Mariza | Portugal | Lisbon | fado poet | artist | Spain
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The Fadista Of Lisbon
by Kevin RaubINSIDE A WORKING-CLASS Portuguese seafood joint in the suburbs of Lisbon, the
young woman who currently lays claim to the most famous
musical face in Portugal is easy to spot. Not because she
doesn't belong in such a simple place as this. Quite the
contrary. She is extremely unpretentious, insistent upon
doing her own grocery shopping and unafraid of getting down
and dirty with a little traditional seafood. The reality is
that this 33-year-old superstar would stand out in any room.
Her striking features, born of a Portuguese father and a
Mozambican mother, are in direct contrast with nearly
everyone else's you stumble across in Portugal (and in any of
its former colonies). And her name, Mariza, has become
synonymous with a musical revolution.
"Are you ready to eat the snails?" It's the first
thing she says to me, this woman who's one of Portugal's most
admired voices, an artist who sells more records in her country
than Madonna and whose voice commands silence upon first note. But,
really, that's not what startles me. Rather, it's her boyishly
short, pressed platinum-blond hair, which is shockingly unique by
Portuguese standards. It clashes with her bronzed skin and dark
eyebrows, creating a sense of beautiful chaos within the circles
she runs, ones that revolve around fado - Portugal's haunting genre
of musical poetry that's drenched in sadness. She stops me in my
tracks, despite my having seen plenty of photos and videos in
preparation for this moment, and I haven't even heard her sing a
note yet.
Fado, which means "destiny," is such an
indispensable part of the Portuguese culture that you may wonder
whether the country would have just acquiesced to Spain were it not
for the people's fierce devotion to their national maudlin
melodies. Though fado's history remains debated to this day, the
general belief is that the musical form - usually sung by a male or
female vocalist (known as a fadista) who's accompanied by the
melancholic sounds of the unique fat-bellied 12-string Portuguese
guitar - was developed by Portuguese sailors who were influenced by
Brazilian and African sounds during their
travels.
It's complicated to explain, but the gist is that
there are 300 or so instrumental fados, from which a head-spinning
number of new combinations can be created, depending on the chosen
lyrics and metrics (quadras are four rhymes, quintilhas are five,
and so on, up to 12 rhymes). Sonically, fado is mesmerizing poetry
set to a sentimental soundtrack, and it captivates anyone within
earshot. Imagine hearing a gut-wrenching eulogy set to music during
the funeral of the most beautiful woman in the world, and you'll
have an inkling of what fado sounds like. The Portuguese have such
an emotional attachment to their national song that it's not
uncommon for tears to be shed during performances, even when the
fados are happy ones.
Walking the streets of Lisbon, I find the
country's history palpable. After all, Portugal was the last
European country to go modern. Today, it remains one of the most
richly preserved European capitals, despite having been brought to
its knees by an earthquake, a tsunami, and a devastating fire - all
on the same tragic day in 1755. The city was rebuilt by the
Marquess of Pombal, whose architectural style (known as Pombaline)
still permeates Lisbon's crotchety old
streets.
The city's two most historically significant
neighborhoods, the once Moorish Alfama, with its mesmerizing
Arab-influenced mazes of hillside staircases and twisting
alleyways, and the tough, blue-collar Mouraria, where Mariza's
parents settled after moving to Portugal from Mozambique when she
was only three years old, are where fado has thrived for two
centuries. Today, though, the bulk of the fado clubs are in Alfama
and Bairro Alto, which has cobblestoned thoroughfares so narrow
that even Smart cars can't navigate the tight
walls.
In Mouraria, Mariza's parents owned a small tavern
and hosted fado singers on the weekends. By the age of five, Mariza
was singing before a live audience - having had no formal fado
lessons. But fadistas will tell you that fado can't be taught at
all. Lessons? Get out! You either have it inside you, or you don't;
it's something that's passed on from generation to generation. And
though she spent a decade in various singing gigs (including a
cheesy cover party band in Lisbon called Funkytown, and belting out
bossa nova on a Portuguese cruise ship in Brazil), Mariza had it in
her. I would spend several days with her before realizing just what
that meant, but Lisbon found out one day back in
1999.
Mariza was having a late-night meal at a tavern
when an older, steadfastly traditional fado poet approached. "He
said to me, 'You don't know how to sing fado. You only sing in
English,'?" she recalls. "It hurt me. I was feeling really bad. I
said, 'I know how to do it. I'll prove it.' There was a musician
with us, and I asked him if he knew any fado. He only knew one song
in one tune. I said, 'Okay. Play it.' I sang, and the poet looked
at me and started crying, saying 'Whatever day you want, I will
receive you in my fado house.'?"
Mariza turned him down at first, still smarting
from his earlier comment. But friends kept pushing her to accept
his offer to appear at his professional fado house, Senhor Vinho,
and she eventually acquiesced. She seized a Monday-night slot, and
it didn't take long before the peanut gallery was in an uproar.
Until that point, fado had been a staunchly conventional art form
best known around the world through the classic voice of Amália
Rodrigues, an archetypal Portuguese beauty (long, dark hair; a
slightly portly figure; customary dress) who remains the undisputed
queen of fado after nearly a century of work. (She died in 1999 at
the age of 79.)
Mariza was anything but a typical fadista. Her
hair was artificially blond, and she stood out like a pop star at
an Amish wedding. She was young, tall, and skinny. She wore Prada
over practicality. She turned heads everywhere she went, so you can
imagine what happened when she first appeared on television.
"Suddenly, here in Portugal, Amália died," she remembers. "I
appeared on television around the same time, and boom! I don't know
what happened. My album was released, and suddenly it was triple
platinum in Portugal. Everybody was crazy, and I was like, 'What is
happening?'?"
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