Read her full biography on Mariza's website
In less than twelve years, Mariza has risen from a well hidden local phenomenon, known only to a small circle of admirers in Lisbon, to one of the most widely acclaimed stars of the World Music circuit.
Fado em mim Album
It all started with her first CD, Fado em Mim, published in 2001, which quickly led to a number of highly successful international presentations - the Québec Summer Festival, in which she received the event’s First Award (Most Outstanding Performance), New York’s Central Park, the Hollywood Bowl, the Royal Festival Hall, the Womad Festival - and ultimately earned her BBC Radio 3’s award for Best European Artist in the area of World Music. Fado em Mim was an exciting first album, showing a young singer with a rich, vibrant voice and a strong artistic personality. She still sang several hits of Amália’s repertory but her approach to the heritage of the great Fado diva was already so personal that she could easily cast away any suggestion of mere imitation. And within her original material Ó Gente da minha Terra, by the young composer Tiago Machado, soon became a major hit in its own right....
Conclusion
No Portuguese artist since Amália Rodrigues has experienced such a triumphant international career, accumulating success after success on the most prestigious world stages, raving reviews from the most demanding music critics worldwide and countless international awards and distinctions. As usual, her musical partners are simply only the best: Jacques Morelenbaum and John Mauceri, José Merced and Miguel Poveda, Gilberto Gil and Ivan Lins, Lenny Kravitz and Sting, Cesária Évora and Tito Paris, Carlos do Carmo and Rui Veloso. An her repertoire, while firmly rooted in classical and contemporary Fado, has grown to include occasional Cape Verdean mornas, Rhythm and Blues classics or any other themes she holds dear to her heart.
In the past twelve years, Mariza has long passed the stage of a mere exotic episode in the World Music scene, ready to be replaced by whatever new colourful phenomenon appears in another geographic corner of the recording industry’s market. She proved to be a major international artist, strongly original and immensely gifted, from whom much is yet to be expected in the future. The young girl from Mozambique, raised in the popular Lisbon neighbourhood of Mouraria, has mastered the roots of her musical culture and developed into an universal artist who is able to open herself to the world without ever losing her heartfelt sense of Portuguese identity. And Portuguese audiences are the first to acknowledge this triumph and pay her back with unlimited love and gratitude.
RUI VIEIRA NERY
Instituto de Etnomusicologia – Centro de Estudos de Música e Dança
Image by Carlos Ramos
