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The new fadoWHY WE'RE WATCHING: Heaven-sent female singers, from Billie Holiday and Cesaria Evora to Peru's Susana Baca and Mali's Oumou Sangaré are a rarity indeed. But with the arrival of Cristina Branco, you can add another voice to that divine choir. Sometimes likened to early jazz divas, the 27-year-old Lisbon native is now exporting her sumptuous brand of fado, Portugal's marvelously mournful traditional music. With her new disc, Post-Scriptum, Branco's crystalline trill and passionate delivery will instantly turn living rooms into intimate fado cafes.HOW IT ALL HAPPENED: Cristina was born with an artist's talent, but not necessarily the chutzpah to flaunt it. "I always sang. But only for myself and friends. I was shy. I still am. But at one point I was getting over an illness and a friend asked me to go with her to a club where they were playing fado. I said, 'Okay,' and I heard those guitars live for the first time in my life and fell in love with that sound. Then somebody invited me to sing. I said, 'Okay. I will.' It was so natural, so simple. When I put my voice out that night, something happened, and I thought, 'This is it. There's no turning back.' And when I looked back, three years had passed, and Murmurios was already recorded." HER SOURCES: "Jazz. The blues. The women. Ella, Billie, Sarah Vaughan. And bossa nova. I'll always love Brazilian music. But also Cape Verdian music, morna. I love morna, it's beautiful." HEIR TO AMALIA? The late Amalia Rodrigues, fado's greatest diva, is worshipped by the Portuguese much in the same way as Billie Holiday is by jazz aficionados. She was awarded a state funeral and Portugal was in official mourning for three days. Christina dismisses the frequently heard suggestion that she is Rodrigues's heir: "No, it's not fair. Absolutely not. Amalia lived in a different time. She had a different childhood, so we must be different." Indeed, the Portugal that Amalia Rodrigues knew was one of poverty, dictatorship, provinciality, and isolation from the rest of Europe. "Besides loving her very much, loving the way she sang and all the songs she recorded, it's different from me. She was a very sad person -- I'm not. I have no particular problems, except the normal problems that every teenager, or every adult has. I have to be an optimist. Why be sad if I'm not?" THE UNBEARABLE DARKNESS OF BEING PORTUGUESE: Portuguese folk music is well known for its abidingly forlorn feel, a natural part of what is a maritime culture well acquainted with negotiating the absence of loved ones off at sea. "Yes, the Portuguese are still basically melancholic. But that sadness, it has a delicate romanticism, like when you're missing somebody very much, the saudade, the longing, you fill it always with hope. It's not as dark as people think. Besides, that was our society in the past; the Portuguese are no longer like that quite so much." THE NEW FADO: "Nowadays, some of the people my age prefer the traditional roots, they prefer to sing only traditional fado. But there are other people like me, like Misia and others, that prefer to show the traditional part, yes, but are trying to make new compositions, to mix different styles. If you are listening to different kinds of music, you must put them in your own because you are being influenced all the time by different cultures." HER CREATIVE PROCESS: "It's full of energy. Each piece of music is born when I discover a new poem. The words are the major element of my whole concept." Her rapport with her musicians, especially with her composer/arranger and Portuguese guitarist Custódio Castelano runs very deep. "Custódio sees the poem and he says, 'This one has music, and this one does not.' And he's right. Every given poem either has music or it does not. If it's too sad, too down, we try to make it lighter so that the sadness will be not that deep and not that strange, and you won't feel that anguish in yourself." Are the arrangements written out? "No, never. Fado is like that." HOW IS SUCH A SMALL WOMAN SO POWERFUL ONSTAGE? Dressed gracefully in mourner's black, dramatically unwrapping and rewrapping herself in fado's traditional shawl, even the diminutive Cristina Branco creates an imposing presence onstage. "Being onstage is something very particular for me. Because the first time I stepped out on it, I said to myself, 'Here, besides singing, I can explore all of the feelings I have inside. I can cry and I can laugh here. If there's an audience, so, let it be.' Some may say that's a selfish position: I'm there for me first, and for them after." But Cristina is true, through and through, to herself. "I don't mind sharing my feelings with [my audience], but I never fake anything onstage. Why fake feelings?" by Carol Amoruso, Barnes and Noble, 2001 |
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