Mariza's modern take on Portugese tradition

by David Whetstone, The Journal

DAVID WHETSTONE talks to Portuguese singing star Mariza ahead of her North East date with friends.

THE fame of Portuguese singer Mariza has put her on a par with football stars Jose Mourinho and Cristiano Ronaldo in her home country and all three have been used to promote it as a tourist destination.

But Mariza’s striking appearance is matched by a striking voice, as you will find if you attend her concert at The Sage Gateshead next week.

For those not yet exposed to the singer’s vocal charms, a review of her recent concert at London’s Royal Festival Hall might whet the appetite.

An adoring crowd applauded wildly and roses were flung on to the stage, reported the Evening Standard critic who described the singer as a “global icon”.

Mariza sings in Portuguese, which is no bad thing, but it has to be said that her English (or maybe it’s my English) makes for a slightly clunky interview down the line from her home in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon.

Some questions have to be rephrased but it’s all amicable enough.

Mariza started out as a fado singer which conjures up melancholy images. This traditional music of Portugal is popularly associated with the soulful side of life – beautiful and beguiling but focusing on struggle and loss.

I ask Mariza for her definition and she says: “The music was born in the 19th Century in Lisbon and was sung by the sailors and people by the sea (which everyone in Lisbon is).

“It’s music which presents the feelings of life, like jealousy, love, lost love, happiness and sadness – everything about human beings.”

So is it melancholy? “Yes it is,” says the singer who was actually born Marisa dos Reis Nunes in Mozambique in 1973, two years before that country’s hard-won independence from Portugal.

Mariza says she has no memory at all of Mozambique. Her family moved to Portugal, her father’s country of origin, when she was three years-old.

She says she started singing at the age of five, encouraged by her father although it seems little encouragement was required.

“I grew up in the middle of a neighbourhood where they sang or listened to traditional songs,” she tells me. Singing in public at such an early age was “a magical experience”.

Mariza, who never had any formal singing lessons, explains: “I was passionate about the sound of the instruments. We learned on the streets.”

Her street-honed prowess was the foundation for a musical career which has taken her all over the world.

“I grew up in the middle of tradition but everyone has their own perspective on traditional music and I’m not an exception,” she says.

“When I do my music I put my personality inside it and that’s what people hear.”

The story goes that 10 years ago Mariza was asked to broadcast a musical tribute to Amália Rodrigues, Portugal’s most popular fado singer, who died in 1999.

It paved the way to her first album, Fado em Mim, which sold 100,000 copies, far exceeding anyone’s expectations and announcing a new queen of fado.

Four more albums followed until Terra was released in 2008, fusing fado with jazz, folk, Flamenco and other musical influences. Like her previous album, Concerto em Lisboa, it was nominated for a Latin Grammy Award as best folk album.

“I want to tell the whole world about my culture but I have had the opportunity to meet different artists and see different cultures and listen to different styles of music and rhythms and all of that influenced me as a singer and as a woman,” says Mariza.

“It led to me doing this record of discovery.”

She has a singular approach to music which is inspired by her love of Portuguese poetry.

Rather than write her own song lyrics or appropriate other people’s, she commissions composers to set her favourite poems to music.

Her favourite Portuguese poet, she tells me, is Fernando Pessoa, who was born in Lisbon in 1888 and died in 1935, aged 47, of cirrhosis of the liver.

A little internet research reveals a melancholy-sounding chap who died with just one published book in Portuguese to his name. Perfect fodder, then, for a fado singer.

From her beautiful home city, Mariza reflects glowingly on her previous visit to The Sage Gateshead about three years ago.

“I am excited to return because the hall is beautiful,” she says.

“I have very, very good memories of Gateshead and so I am looking forward to making a concert there with my wonderful friends.”

Mariza explains that she never refers to audiences, preferring to regard those who have taken the trouble to share in her music and her culture as friends.

In fact, in recalling the North East, the champion of the melancholy fado becomes quite animated all of a sudden.

“One of the things I remember from the last time I was there is it was really cold and I had a huge jacket on and a hat and gloves.

“It was so cold! But I saw a group of girls with miniskirts and sun tans and I thought I would have loved to dress like that, but only in summer.

“As a singer you have to protect the voice and everything. I was a little bit jealous.”

I haven’t the heart to tell Mariza that today, of all days, it’s hat and gloves weather in the North East, the whole place having become an ice rink again.

No doubt her North East friends will help to warm her up.

Join her and them at The Sage Gateshead next Tuesday, February 9, for the 7.30pm concert in Hall One. Box office: 0191 443 4661.