by Nicholas Jones
Fado, the music sometimes called the “Portuguese blues,” is a relatively conservative genre. But recently, fado, like the Portuguese navigators of the Renaissance, has begun to explore the globe, and Ana Moura has been at the forefront of that exploration.
Ana Moura’s concert Friday at Gartner Auditorium in the Cleveland Museum of Art showed an enthusiastic audience — a nearly packed house — how the sad ballads of fado can cross over into jazz, blues, and folk.
Moura’s deep contralto voice, throaty and intense, evoked the saudade—meaning, roughly, “yearning” — that is at the heart of fado.
Backed up by a five-man band, she gave her concert in a single set of about ninety minutes. [Read more…]