Germany - Fado singer Mísia has recorded a new album titled Canto. The album
will be in stores October 10th.Germany - Fado singer Mísia has recorded a new album titled Canto. The album
will be in stores October 10th.
To promote the album, Mísia will present her new repertoire October 4th, at
the "Lettre Ulysses Award for the Art of Reportage" in Berlin. The award was
created by the cultural journal "Lettre International" together with the Goethe
Institut Inter Nationes and the Aventis Foundation. The ceremony will take place
at the "Tipi" in Berlin. The ceremony will be broadcast in part on "Arte".
Mísia will also be in Germany on tour in January 2004:
20.01. Berlin, Philharmonie
22.01. Karlsruhe, Konzethaus
23.01. Freiburg, Herz Jesu Kirche
27.01. Düsseldorf, Tonhalle
28.01. Bonn,, Brückenforum
30.01. Darmstadt, Centralstation
31.01. Hamburg, Musikhalle
05.02. München, Herkulessaal
Mísia talks about the new recording: "A work based on the music of Carlos
Paredes has always been part of my gallery of the impossible. That’s where I
store records born out of the pictures of Marc Rothkos, records that are
accomplices of Louise Bourgeois’ sculptural crimes, records that have fled out
of Francesca Woodman’s photographs or were strangled because of Peter Handke.
And let’s not forget Arsenii Tarkovskii and other unsingable writers - or are
they? ... "Shouldn’t a needle, aerial and alive, guide me through the world like
a thread".
It seemed a lot more reasonable to continue to nourish my wonderful and neurotic
relationship with Fado.
Beyond all reason and possessed by fury and tenderness, I finally recorded this
album in seven months.
On one side stood the brilliancy of the work of Paredes, on the other the
resistance of and the responsibility for the material.
It was important to listen carefully to the "opinions" the record offered. To
choose the repertoire by following a song line that only I could hear
instinctively within myself. To find someone gifted with the necessary
sensibility and skill to fit verses of unforeseeable metric into that music. To
look for an arranger and musical producer who would understand the popular and
docile character, the Portuguese side and the universal dimension of this work
without hurting its relevance or its authenticity. To challenge my Fado
guitarists from Lisbon to use a different musical language from their own. To
sing without converting the pieces into caricatures of a "forced Fado" or
neglecting the "soul of Fado" that is forever embodied in my voice.
If Fado is "a way of feeling", a "state of mind", then this, without the shadow
of a doubt, is a Fado record, even if the music contained in it is not Fado.
I always knew that a new "corpus" would emerge out of the encounter of all these
creative particularities. I never wanted to approach an insipid copy of an
aesthetic that belongs to Paredes and only to Paredes, an aesthetic that only he
and nobody else can master, that will forever be his secret.
"Canto" is a gift ....
Only now, after twenty five years of traveling and living on and off stages I am
ready to give in peace, without fear.
I want to thank everyone who has helped my to do this record. I am particularly
obliged to Vasco Graça Moura, author of most of the lyrics. I thank him for
writing for a particular voice for the first time, for giving his poetic wisdom
and his talent, for his extraordinary comprehension of metric necessities that
are implied in such a work. For being elegantly true to Paredes’ intentions,
respecting the history of a piece of music here (António Marinheiro - Presságio
de Alfama), integrating references to a title into his poems there (Cançao para
Titi - Tia minha gentil). And finally I thank him for having written with such
awe inspiring beauty that I felt I was growing while singing his words, growing
out of a depth inside me whose existence I ignored.
I thank Sérgio Godinho (author of my first original Fado written thirteen years
ago) for the matchless quality of his text for "Raiz" and for the friendship
that motivated him to write it. Thank you, Sérgio!
To be able to sing such a classic piece as "Verdes Anos" in itself is reason
enough to thank its author, Pedro Tamen.
Many thanks also to Henri Agnel, an artist specialized in Arabic and Renaissance
music, who has accompanied Paredes on his French tours and who has been familiar
with his work for more than thirty years now, for the richness and emotionality
of his arrangements.
In "Cançao para Titi" we hear the rhythm of the oriental dance "baladi" from
southern Egypt (Nubia); at the beginning of "raiz" we hear the Persian rhythm
"from the mother" or "of the heart beat" and later, the rhythm of a dance from
the renaissance.
The cistre, a kind of lute used at the Elizabethan court (and, according to
some, the ancestor of the Portuguese guitar) creates a medieval pitch in the
improvisation in "Ah Nao II". And we hear the sophisticated sounds of the string
quintet of the Camerata de la Bourgogne in perfect harmony with our Portuguese
guitar and the Fado guitar from Lisbon.
This song (canto) of mine is for Carlos Paredes, and in are the best things I
could find to give him.
I will never know if "the musician" would have liked this record, but I want to
believe that his generous heart will one day sense the love and veneration with
which this work was devised, felt and done."
Mísia
World Music Central
http://www.worldmusiccentral.org/article.php/20030923111101394