IF FADO -- traditional Portuguese blues with roots in both Africa and Brazil -- is enjoying a new found popularity it is largely because of Mariza whose album, Fado en Min, sold 100,000 copies within days of its release. It is Mariza who has persuaded a new generation that the music that developed among Portuguese emigrants in both Africa and South America has a continuing relevance. "Fado is not music, it is a feeling. It is not sad, it is melancholy. I didn't decide to sing Fado, it was my fate," says Mariza, who was born in Mozambique and moved to Lisbon at the age of three. "I am not looking to be famous, or to do big concerts. I am just trying to sing the culture and be myself." She began singing Fado aged five in the restaurant owned by her family, from which beginnings she is now well on her way to joining that select group of performers who enjoy name recognition across several continents. Fado en Min won three World Music Awards, while Mariza was voted Best European Act of 2003 by BBC radio listeners and personality of the year by the International Press Association in Portugal, and won the European Border Breakers Award for introducing traditional songs to an international audience. As part of the Cairo International Song Festival Cairo audiences will have a chance to see Mariza perform seven classic Fado songs -- Madness, Maria Lisboa, Little Boy of the Black Quarter, The Dark Boat, Monk Rider, Listen Gere, Senhor Wine and Spring -- on 23 August at the Manasterly Palace. And seeing is as important as hearing given that, like Argentine tango and Greek rebitka, Fado communicates as much through gesture and facial expression as through sound. For full details, see Listings
