Madredeus
Portuguese musicians
Their idea was a musical homage to Portuguese culture. They began nearly 15 years ago in a suburb of the Portuguese capital Lisbon that gave them their name: Madredeus. Today, these four male musicians accompanying one female voice are one of the world's most faithfully followed groups, despite the fact that no one can agree on a genre into which to slot them. They have been labeled gothic, baroque, derivative of Lisbon's famous fado music, religious, mystical — none of which alone is accurate. This year Madredeus have played before audiences in Sao Paulo — 90,000 people — Helsinki, Belgrade, Mexico and London. Over the years they have given more than 100 concerts in both Italy and Spain; have toured Japan seven times, Germany five. The group's average age is 41, but their followers range from teenagers to grandparents. All this despite the fact that, Brazil apart, most of their fans don't know Portuguese. Madredeus concerts have almost no body language: the four men wear black and concentrate on classical guitars, keyboard, cello, accordion. Lone singer Teresa Salgueiro usually stands still and distant as a nightingale, her voice pouring out sound that has been called angelic. "No body language is also a language," insists Pedro Ayres Magalhães, principal songwriter, guitarist and one of the group's founders. Ayres says it was a conscious decision that the musicians shouldn't distract from the sound, "so that people are not interested in our weight or our hairstyles." He calls what they perform "musical fantasy with Portuguese roots," made with a universal audience in mind. Those roots reach into nostalgia, peacefulness, perhaps the famed Portuguese melancholy. Ayres explains the fantasy in "the choreography of the group — that of a woman waiting. This woman also fantasizes about God, about love, about destiny. She fantasizes about the person she waits for, the things she wants to have, or have again. An audience might imagine her on the edge of a cliff or on a boat as much as on a stage." This role of lady-in-waiting belongs to Salgueiro, who joined the group as a 17-year-old. Now 31, she says she sees Madredeus as on a journey "navigating among other cultures through our music." The lyrics written for her extraordinary voice are for her "a hymn to life and hope." The wistfulness of Madredeus' music is caught in a footnote to one of Ayres' songs on the latest of their nine albums, Antologia: "Lovers belong to each other as the sun belongs to the sea — not much, but enough to be going on with."
— By Rod Usher
PHOTO: MONTSE VELANDO — CONTACTO
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