After fifteen or twenty years of "alternative" music, indie-rock reviews have their own highly codified language. Bands are post- this or -core that; guitars are angular; bildungsroman is a dominant theme. A refreshing change, then, comes from an album of melancholy music that was first sung well over a century before "emo" began to make all the young boys cry. Cristina Branco and her producer/guitarist, Custodio Castelo, are modern practitioners of the fado, a Portuguese folk music distinguished by its expression of passionate ennui. "Fado" translates as fate, but the emotion of the fado reaches well beyond the literal to encompass a yearning, palpable metaphysical ache. The 28-year-old Branco and her accompanists aren't constrained by the stylized conventions of Portugal's national music, incorporating elements of classical guitar, jazz and Latin rhythms into a rich, beautiful fantasia.
"Sem Abrir Caminhos" begins with a waltz rhythm, and tells the story of a woman who has "lost [her] illusions". "Black are my velvety wings, seeking for new anxieties," sings Branco; "Having fled from the country where I was born/I am what I never wanted to be:/A swallow, overcome with nostalgia". The clunky English translations on the lyric sheet (one complaint is that the song titles themselves aren't translated) can't convey the melodious nature of the Portuguese language, but they do get across the longing at the fado's core. "The night carried you away and left me unfinished memories/Secrets merely hinted at/And silence instead of some whispered words," laments the narrator of "Palavras Proibidas," before concluding, "And behind my voice/The silence of the barely said words between us/Calls your name on every street corner."
The settling of quiet after speaking, thoughts communicated with only a look, the shadow created by the light -- love in the fado is a fragile, nocturnal creature, easily constrained by the intrusion of the "straitjacket of life". Despite the often mournful subject matter, though, there's something gentle, and ultimately comforting, about the fado's riveting outbursts of emotion. You are not alone, the songs say, speaking to each of us in times of sorrow. Our own suffering as we pass through life has been met and matched by Cristina Branco, whose passionate, exquisite voice sparks hope through the tears.
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