We all know sad songs say so much.
If so, the fado must say more than any other song-form in the world. Named for the Portuguese word for fate, the fado treats romantic pain with enough zeal to please even the most accomplished masochist.
Singers in this style - often women - dress in black shawls, which they cling to as if lost in mourning or bracing against he chill of their own emotions. With downcast eyes, they throw themselves into their eloquent verses and enraptured melodies with the righteous passion of the wretched.
Not that fado singers themselves see the style that way. “Yes, it’s sad, but it can also be very happy,” says Ana Moura, the most celebrated young singer in this historic genre. “I call it Portuguese soul music because it’s a style where you show all of your feelings. It’s every emotion at once.”
To prove it, on the title track of her new CD, “Desfado,” Moura croons, “Oh, it’s so sad, this joy of mine/ Oh, it’s so joyful, this deep sadness.”
In another song, she croons, “Thank you for telling me lies/ thank you for making me cry.”
The point, it seems, is to savor emotion itself, to celebrate the frisson of feeling beyond consequence. It takes a singer of rare passion to articulate the nuances of such risks and, right now, the Lisbon-based Moura stands at the forefront of them.
Not only has she been lionized in her native Portugal, she has attracted international attention, with invitations from both the Rolling Stones and Prince to perform with them. To extend her reach, Moura for the first time included English lyrics on her new album, which is backed by a U.S. tour that comes to City Winery on Monday.
Moura wanted to elaborate her sound, so she hooked up with producer Larry Klein, the ultimate “woman’s producer,” who has worked with such interpretive stars as Joni Mitchell, Shawn Colvin, Tracy Chapman and Madeleine Peyroux. He suggested she cover Mitchell’s “A Case of You,” a song that perfectly fits both the fado’s flair for agony and its rich poetry.
Many traditional fados have matched the fixed lyrics of great Portuguese poets to shifting melodies. On the album, Moura works with key musicians in the genre, like Angelo Friere and Pedro Soares. The former plays the Portuguese guitar (or “guitarra”), a smaller, 12-string answer to the classic version, with a sound as wistful and flinty as a mandolin. The latter plays the viola, another common instrument in the genre.
In general, fados involve spare instrumentation, often just the two guitars with the singer, though Moura's latest tour features bass, drums and keyboards. Moura, who born in 1979 in Santarem, Portugal, grew up around the fado, played by her family. “From 4 years old, my weekends were spent with musicians jamming with my father,” she says.
She cut her debut, “Guarda-me a vida na mao,” in 2003 and quickly became an heir to genre stars bound for international acclaim like, most recently, Mariza. She has even earned comparisons to the fado’s most cherished star, Amalia Rodriguez. It helps that Moura has sung songs associated with her, like “Barco Negro.” “She had a huge range and incredible vocal color,” Moura says of Rodriguez. “And she was avant-garde - always reinventing herself.”
The comparisons to Rodriguez have more to do with Moura’s potential as an ambassador of the style than with specific characteristics. The young singer has her own tone, with a huskiness that doesn’t hinder her more expressive flights.
The new album is Moura’s fifth work in the studio. It features a rare original piece, “Dream of Fire,” cut with a star fan of hers, Herbie Hancock. Like its predecessors, the disc features songs written about the fado itself. In the manner of the blues, the genre becomes a character in the lyrics, a muse earned by a history that stretches back to the 1820s.
It’s that character which first attracted Prince to the singer. He heard her CDs and caught her show in Paris. Then, he invited her to sing with him on two fados in his own European tour.
The Stones asked her to perform on a self-tribute album that also featured Norah Jones and Sheryl Crow. Afterward, they invited her sing with them live in Portugal. “The Portuguese people were not expecting to see a fado singer with a rock band,” Maura says. “I was very nervous because Mick Jagger sings six keys higher than me. I had to improvise a melody.”
She sang on both “No Expectations” and “Brown Sugar.” The latter, a lascivious rocker, isn’t what you’d expect from a fado star, but Moura believes it worked perfectly. As she says, “The fado can be more things than you think.”
— Ana Moura
Monday at 8 p.m.
City Winery, 155 Varick St.
(212) 608-0555
LIVE FROM NEW YORK:
— Atoms for Peace
Thurs. at 8 p.m.
Owen Sweeney/Rex / Rex USA/Owen Sweeney/Rex / Rex USA Thom Yorke is the leader of the band Atoms for Peace, which will play Le Poisson Rouge.
Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St.
(212) 505-3474
You could never see Radiohead in a club this intimate. But the new band by their lead singer - Thom Yorke - will appear in this Village basement. Just don’t call out for “Paranoid Android.”
— Drive by Truckers
Fri. at 8 p.m.
Capitol Theater, 149 Westchester Ave., Port Chester
(914) 937-4126
The Truckers give their songs a Southern Gothic twist. They’re rife with violence, alcoholism and poverty, told with a boogie beat and an empathic eye.
— Dr. John, the Night Tripper and Allen Toussaint
Sat. at 8 p.m.
Town Hall, 123 W. 43rd St.
(212) 840-2824
Call it a New Orleans harmonic convergence: This show features Dr. John, who brings the deep drawl of the Crescent City, and Toussaint, who contributes something less often mentioned about the place: its sophistication. Better, the Dr. will be in his acid-dipped “Night Tripper” incarnation.
— Balkan Beat Box
Sun. at 8 p.m.
Webster Hall, 125 E. 11th St.
(212) 353-1600
There’s a whole world of Balkan rock out now, heard in bands from Slavic Soul Party to the Raya Brass Band. But only Balkan Beat Box marries sounds of that region to some from the Middle East and others from the wide world of electronica.
— Pinback
Sun. at 8 p.m.
Music Hall of Williamsburg, 66 N. Sixth St.
(718) 486-5400
A darkly percolating bass and a lightly pinging guitar bounce around the songs of Pinback. On the rock duo’s first CD in five years, “Information Retrieved,” they use skeletal arrangements to create a sound that’s surprisingly rich.
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