Artist Bio:
"This is my life. This is not a project. Musicians who say they are working on a project mean that they'll be doing something else in four years. I will be a fadista until I die." — Paulo Bragança
Ask Paulo Bragança and he'll say he singsfado, the national song of Portugal. But "sing" may be too weak a verb; to say he "lives" fado might not be enough. In his 25 years, Bragança has mined the musical soul of his homeland to the extent that its past, through him, has become its future.
"In Portugal, I am alone. The fadistas are old; they won't change. There are younger singers, but they choose the easy, traditional model, because mostly they are yuppies who never have had to fight for anything," he says. "The original fadistas were far more punk. These new singers are only young in age. Their feelings aren't young; their ideas aren't young; they are replicas of the old thing."
Amai, his second album, shatters the old models. Rhythmically invoking Brazilian styles, flamenco, even hip-hop, the lush production features piano, concertina, and harp, and was a surprise hit in Portugal. Paulo Bragança takes fado's long-buried roots as the celebratory music of Lisbon's African population, as the agglutinated musical form fed by seafaring traders, and with contemporary sensibility, brings them to the fore.
Also up front are Paulo's own compositions, some of which he had written as a teenager. "They said the material was not fit for someone my age," he remembers. "I feel I stopped being a child when we left Angola, when I was 12. When you feel something, you feel it, no matter how old you are."
Born in Angola when that country was part of the Portuguese empire, Bragança was raised listening to fado: his father played the signature 12-string Portuguese guitar and his mother sang the mournful songs of loss and destiny that connected them to their home. "I feel I'm the justification of my family," Paulo says, "They couldn't become artists because their lives were too hard. If it wasn't me it would be my son. I have always known that."
But the tumultuous struggles for independence throughout Africa intervened, and the Bragança family was sent wandering. "Imagine. They come with Kalashnikovs at 2 a.m. and you must go. It's insane. You're out of your home, out of your country. There begins the fado." Almost. Eventually settling, aptly enough, in the northern town of Bragança ("Portuguese Siberia," as he calls it, "The stores sell two things: milk and rat poison."), Paulo was then sent to Lisbon, the capital, to study law.
It was at a graduation party when his relationship fado truly began. Paulo was invited to sing for the academy's festivities, and the performance awakened him to what today is his calling. "I had one year to go before getting my degree, but I knew I would never go back," he said. "I knew that I would be an artist, that I would fight."
For four years, Bragança sang on Lisbon's fado circuit, winning over more and more listeners while riling the old guard fadistas. From the beginning, he challenged fado's instrumental orthodoxy, and his presence onstage — T-shirts, leather jacket, combat boots or barefoot — was a marked departure from tradition.
"Everyone knows Paulo Bragança," he jokes. "They say, 'Ah, the one without shoes.' They don't know the origins of fado, the social and cultural and local significances, so I'm a scandalous figure for them, these old-fashioned people."
"Fado for Portugal is like a sacred altar covered in dust. And if someone dares to clear the dust, he'll be shot. Like it shouldn't be touched. But I clear the dust, I paint, I dig through it to discover the real fado," he says. "If you don't look for the truth, don't be an artist. You should be a priest in a monastery." When he was at last signed and began his first album, Notas sobre a alma, the record company wouldn't let him record his own material, but restricted him to standards. His truth would have to wait.
Only an artist who so strongly identifies with his subject would be able to transform it the way Paulo has fado. He refuses to break with the tradition entirely, seeing a less-controversial life as a pop singer as an easy way out. "First I must say, it is my fate. Second, it's a form of patriotism, not just of Portugal, but of all countries," he explains. "Portugal gave worlds to the world, you know? That was the first part of its mission. Fado came out of those musical forms, from Brazil, from Africa, from Europe. And if we lose that connection, the world loses too."
— Luaka Bop
