Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Cristina Branco - Fado from Portugal


Cristina Branco has chosen a different path. She has not sought a naive break with tradition but, in preserving the best of it (just listen to some of the classics she sings), she uses her authentic interpretation to breathe new life into the fado tradition. With her beautiful voice and sensitive rendition, she aims to merge the lyrics with the fado music, to make someone experiencing them hear them as inseparable.
Cristina Branco (1972) grew up far from the fado houses of Lisbon and nothing suggested that she was predestined for the fado. Like almost all young Portuguese born after the revolution of 1974, she was interested in folk music, jazz, blues, bossa nova but not in fado. She regarded it as a genre for a different generation. This lasted until her 18th birthday, when her grandfather gave her the album Rara e Inédita by Amália Rodrigues. Suddenly, Cristina Branco discovered all the emotions that the genre could offer in the close connections that arose among voice, poetry and music. The amateur singer - then studying communication sciences and still full of her ambition to become a journalist - began to develop her vocal technique and to take her new vocation seriously.

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