Guest Artist Bio
Mariza
With her striking looks and even more striking voice, Mariza has in a few short years gone from singing in the backroom of a Lisbon bar to selling out the world’s top concert halls, from New York to Moscow and from the Sydney Opera House to the Barbican.
Today she is recognized the world over as the queen of the Portuguese musical style know as fado. Yet she was not born in Portugal, but in Mozambique. “My father is Portuguese but my mother is African,” she explains. “We moved to Portugal when I was three, but I still have a few memories from Mozambique.” She recalls this early life in Africa in some of her songs, such as “Transparente.”
In the Portuguese capital of Lisbon, her family took over a small tavern in a neighborhood called Mouraria. It’s an area with a long and rich association with fado’s history, and her father would employ fado musicians to entertain weekend customers. “I fell in love with the sound of the Portuguese guitar coming up through the floor, and I started to sing fado when I as five years old,” Mariza recalls.
As she grew older, her school friends told her that fado was old-fashioned, and she tried singing in pop, jazz and soul styles. But her love of fado had taken deep root, and she soon returned to it. Singing in Lisbon’s fado bars and tavernas, she began to develop a following, although she never had any ambition to become a global superstar. She was well into her 20s before she recorded her first album, 2001’s Fado em Mim. Even then, thoughts of international success were far from her mind. “I made the first record as a gift to my father,” she says.
The record became a best-seller in Portugal and was then released around the world. Rave reviews and further award-winning recordings followed. Within an astonishingly short time, Mariza found that she had become the global superstar she had never set out to be.
Fado
What exactly is fado? The word itself translates as “destiny” or “fate,” and the often mournful tone of the music has led to fado being called the “Portuguese blues.” As a musical form it has been around at least since the early 19th century, although some scholars believe its origins to be much older. But perhaps it is best to let Mariza take up the story in her own words. “It was the music of Portuguese sailors, of African slaves, of Brazilians. It was a fusion of cultures. Our sailors and explorers spread Portuguese culture abroad, but they brought some back too.”
Central to the spirit of fado is the notion of saudade. The word is almost impossible to translate, but Mariza has her own simple but eloquent explanation: “It’s a fantastic word about separation and reconnection. Saudade is when you miss something. It could be in a happy way or a sad way. It could be a person, a country, a house, a smell. You could have saudade about many things.”
The means, she says, that fado does not always have to be melancholic. “It’s realistic rather than sad and it takes you deep into the soul of a human being. In fado we sing about many things, God, love, death and sadness – but happiness, too.”
Since her first recording seven years ago, Mariza has taken fado to a new and younger audience, not only in Portugal but around the world. “When I give concerts, I see people cry who don’t speak Portuguese,” she says. “They might not understand the words. But they recognize that the feelings in the music can speak to everyone.”