November 12, 2009

Fado and Mariza

Last night we had two events - the Urban Green party at Hermann Park (it had a Circus theme, though I could not tell you why) and the Fado singer Mariza.

We only stayed at the party for a few moments, as Mariza started at 8:00 PM. It looked like it was going to be a happening party. They had sliders from Little Bigs, and I saw some pizza walking around as well.

We got to Jones hall about 5 minutes before the concert started, found our seats (almost the same seats we had for the Tom Waits concert) and settled in for a very pleasant couple of hours.

Fado is a traditional Portuguese form of music, and Mariza is its reigning queen. Fado means destiny or fate, and most of the tunes sound very sad and filled with longing.

I say "sound" because they are all in Portuguese. I don't speak Portuguese. The great thing is that you don't need to. While you listen to these songs you get transported back to another time. Imagine, maybe, sitting in a smokey bar, waiting for your letters of transit to get you out of Franco's Spain.

Or imagine that your loved one has disappeared over the horizon, and you are left behind in s steamy equatorial jungle on your own, perhaps never to see her again.

All very sad.

For her first encore, she asked the crowd where people were from besides the US and Portugal. She got quite a list: Israel, Venezuela, Turkey, Greece, Bosnia, Argentina, Mexico Colombia, Guatemala, France, The Netherlands, and Angola were the places that Doreen and I remembered. She woudl sing a little song from each country (that she could remember) it was nice. Then she sang "Smile" (though your heart is breaking) in English, one more encore un-amplified (we were close, but it was still very soft) and ended up with arousing, upbeat Fado.

It was a nice evening.

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