“I close my eyes, and you’re not far away. I lose my senses, I don’t lose the north, because I’m lucky to still hear you calling”
In a recent interview, Ana Moura gave some insight into her artistic approach: “This album is everything but exclusion – It’s inclusion, the meeting of all the inheritances that I have,” she said. She is referring to her forthcoming album, due to be released later this year. However, ahead of the album, she has shared her single “Jacarandá”, which was released on 25th of June.
Compared to “Andorinhas”, where Ana has discovered the strength of her freedom, her forthcoming single “Jacarandá” lets us perceive the aroma of her vision. The song is made with equal measures of rapture and balance, of poetic words and sensual rhythms that translate an Atlantic feeling – drawn from Lisbon, but realising the origins from Brazil and Africa. “Jacarandá” is a collaboration with Mike Scott, the guitarist who accompanied Prince, and brings a touch of universal class to the song.
“Jacarandá” begins with a familiar melody in her voice – without words but with pure emotion. The narrative comes later: “Fecho os olhos e não estás distante, perco os sentidos, não perco o norte, por ter a sorte de ainda te ouvir chamar“. (“I close my eyes, and you’re not far away. I lose my senses, I don’t lose the north, because I’m lucky to still hear you calling”) As always, the song’s production is advanced with a rhythm that invites to a sweet swing of a dance for two. Dancing is a way of expressing freedom, and Ana Moura wants to dance.
2021 has already been a year filled with triumphs for Ana Moura, adding sales awards to the applause of the public and international critics and performances on some of the most renowned global stages. Any other artist would get comfortable in this established position, but Ana Moura constantly strives to reinvent herself. “I am attentive to these changes and I am learning the best way how to relate to my audience without any intermediaries.” Ana wants to dance with her audience and Fado, of course, has that universal appeal – assuming a tropical position that is both present, and in the future always open for sharing.
| A little bit more about Ana Moura |
| When she took the stage with Prince, Ana already had a career, and a lifetime of immersion in that force – that of music – that always pulled her. Her relationship with music began long before she entered a studio: perhaps when, still in the womb, she heard her mother sing fado, but she also felt the sounds that came from the turntable at home playing records by Fausto and Ruy Mingas, by José Afonso and Bonga.With her family roots in Africa, there may even be some distant echo, carried by her genetic heritage, that even before that moment had already pushed it back to what it is today. But there was a route, of course. She started by learning with the voice of her parents, who sang whenever they could. As a girl, at the same time she learned to read, she sang fado with the same effort and innocence with which she danced semba and kizomba.Her successful debut albums Aconteceu and Para Além da Saudade allowed her to add success upon success and expand the map of her presentations, gaining a world for her voice. From the best fado houses in Lisbon, she moved to the Carnegie Hall in New York and from there to the Rolling Stone sProject, an adventure led by the saxophonist of the mythical British band, Tim Ries, who mixed the songbook immortalised in the voice of Mick Jagger with performers selected from various parts of the world. Like Ana Moura, who offered her versions of ‘Brown Sugar‘ and ‘No Expectations‘. Her fifth studio album Desfado topped the Portuguese Albums Chart and since then it has been certified 6× Platinum by the Associação Fonográfica Portuguesa, becoming the best-selling album of the 2010s in Portugal, by a Portuguese artist. It also appeared in the charts of Belgium, Spain and the United States.“She has a tremendous presence and voice,” said the Guardian in 2016, recognising the strength that translates into talent, courage, and vision, and which has been the most important vector in a career that has never stopped growing toward the future. |