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You should give a listen to "Terra", the latest album from the Portuguese Fado singer Mariza. There's a duet with Buika called "Pequenas verdades".
Later that night I went to the Palau de la Musica, Barcelona’s ungodly concert hall (more about that later) to see Concha Buika, a singer I’d never heard of, whose family is from Equatorial Guinea but who was raised in Majorca and has a strong gypsy influence. The woman blew me away. A powerhouse singer who can really move a lot of air and push her voice to a very loud, very ragged edge, Buika has a new record El Ultimo Trago on Warner Music Spain that features her singing Mexican Rancheras, a form of sad love song usually written and sung by men. In “Luz de Luna” for example she sings lyrics that loosely translate as:
“I want moonlight/for my sad nights/in order to dream/the illusion that you brought me/to feel you mine/mine like no other/since you left/I haven’t had moonlight/I feel your entanglement/like hooks that grab me/and drowning in the beach of my drunken pain. I feel your chains dragging/in the quiet night/and the light of moon/blue like none other/because since you left me/I haven’t had moonlight.”
“Drowning in the beach of my drunken pain”? Wow! It’s heavy, no doubt. The interesting part is that she sings these laments not with a dejected tone but with a defiant edge to her voice. It makes for a very different experience than is usually the case with rancheras that are more commonly sung by a bunch of drunken men, sitting around a table, bemoaning the one that got away. Concha also dances, has an engaging stage presence and wears dresses that um… don’t leave a whole lot to the old imagination. Seriously though she’s a serious talent, one that could obviously sing whatever she wanted and do it well.