Photo Credits: Image Courtesy Of Calabash Music
Celia Mara
Born in Minas Gerais near the Bahian border, Célia Mara grew up with music.
"I remember my mother and sisters singing all day long…"
Macumba-drums and samba rhythms have accompanied her since childhood and formed her music style. She started to sing as a 6 year old over the roof-tops of Pedra Azul, her home-town. At the age of 16, she made her debut on stage with her own compositions, participated as the first woman of her region at a supra-regional festival and performed in Belo Horizonte, centre of the new Brazilian music. TV appearances and gigs in major jazz clubs, theatres and festivals followed, from Belo Horizonte to Rio, São Paulo and Salvador.
She gave her voice to the left parties for the first elections after military dictatorship and has been engaged in social movements.
In 1990, after a concert in Bahia, she was invited to play in Switzerland. She ended up staying there for about one year. She started performing in small jazz clubs and festivals followed. But most importantly, she discovered the European jazz scene and worked for the first time with European musicians. She played frequently, in Germany (Jazzfestival Burghausen), Italy and Austria. But her visa expired… and didn't get renewed.
She left for Portugal and started again playing in small clubs. In fall 1992, she chose Austria's Salzburg (hometown of Mozart) as her new homebase — "To discover Europe at my own pace, and to learn to understand its people."
Soon, she became well known, performing at international festivals, as opening group for Abdullah Ibrahim, Airto Moreira & Flora Purim, and in her own concerts.
To get new energy, she returned to Brazil in 1996, back to samba and rhythm with funk and jazz on her mind. In Salvador she composed and recorded the new songs for her CD, Hot Couturedo Samba. The arrangements were made by Leitieres Leite, "a fantastic musician, so sensible." In the end of 1996, she came back to Vienna — her newhome town — with a strong tool in hand: a new vision of Brazilian music.
In 1997, she founded the band potênciaX — "la crème de la crème" of the new Austrian jazz scene. They performed at the major festivals in Austria, presenting an independent style. Samba meets funk and jazz — original Brazilian groovesmix with sophisticated instrumental interpretations of an European music concept.
In December of 1997 she completed the (independent) production of the CD Hot Couture do Samba, which opened her way to the Austrian Broadcasting Company (national radio and TV), where her songs are on continuous airplay.
In 1998 and 1999 she performed Hot Couture do Samba on the main Austrian festivals and concerthalls. In 1999, she produced the benefit-CD Necessàrio, a collection of MPB (musicapopular Brasileira) with critical songs of Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, ChicoBuarque and herself. Necessário is a live recording of the benefit concert "Jazz for Kosovo," Art Farmer's last live-concert, with Wolfgang Puschnig, Karl Ratzer and others in the Viennese Radio Hall.
All songs Célia Mara presented are dedicated to the question of human rights. The net sales benefit went to the project Nika Jaina in Rio de Janeiro, a youth-targeted education program in A Favela. —Courtesy Calabash Music