Mísia - Pura Vida (Banda Sonora) (2019)

After living for two years that – for the worst reasons – represented an essential learning process of decisive importance, I am still the same albeit different. In fact, everything has changed. Especially my work, which is me – there are no borders.

Here is the soundtrack of that period in which there is heaven and hell, harshness and passion, Fados of bitter longing, songs of heart and bone, black roses, absence, tears and rebirth. The musics of Pura Vida (soundtrack) are pure music, pure musical notes completely free of rules because I do not need anymore to belong to any genre or tribe after what I have experienced.

I cannot nor do I want to render this banal. I do not think Fado is happy or sad, it is Life, Fate. Only a music with this nobility allows us to uses its most symbolic melodies the way painters use primary colours to express everything their souls need to say.

That is why I say that this album includes fado musics but it is not an album of Fado. Pura Vida (soundtrack) is full of gaps, rough edges and sometimes a little “silk, velvet and wool”. The Portuguese guitar is Heaven and the electric guitar Hell. The feeling of tragedy is conveyed in this work through the electric guitar.

It is not a question of being “pop or modern”, on the contrary. I dare to say that there is a cinematographic beauty in Fabrizio Romano’s arrangements. It is not an album to anaesthetise the public. It is an album that seeks the “other”, an echo of that fragility and inability that we have all felt. The mystical Rumi said that the wound is the place through which light enters. In this case you are being asked to hear the difference. The beauty, strength and humility that a “calvario” can offer us . The anxiety of a possible path through the words of Miguel Torga, Tiago Torres da Silva and Vasco Graça Moura, among others.

And finally, the wish to live and sing without being afraid to show your scars.

“(…) her voice can be like smoke, velvet or acid. It sobs, whispers and seduces with the raw emotional daring of Edith Piaf’s. By turns tender and defiant, her singing is so expressive that you don’t need to understand the Portuguese words to comprehend the bitter experience and pain.” (The New York Times)

“(…) one of the most remarkable singers in Europe today” (Chicago Tribune)

“Queen of fado” (The Washington Post)

Luís Cunha, violin (Tracks Nr 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
Filipe Felizardo, guitar (Tracks Nr 12, 14)
Paulo Gaspar, bass clarinet (Tracks Nr 1, 4, 6, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14)
Luís Guerreiro, portuguese guitar (Tracks Nr 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12, 14)