Dulce Pontes
O Primeiro Canto

They are ascents, bridges and descents
and boats and bridges again
it's a land forgotten
by entire pages
that even now does not look at us
does not speak to us
and does not let us know

It's the mysterious "Lusitania" outlined by the verses of Ivano Fossati in the now distant 1990, just in time to serve as a soundtrack for my descent from the green promontories of Minho, scented with eucalyptus, to the arid expanses of olive groves in the Alentejo (only the Algarve would remain "an unpicked flower"). In hindsight and with my innate tendency to "split hairs" (a phrase of rare effectiveness common in the middle basin of the Arno, roughly equivalent in meaning to "splitting hairs"), I am forced not exactly to contradict, but in some way to update the last quoted verse. Yes, indeed, at least from a musical perspective, Portugal for several years has "spoken to us and let us know" much more than one would expect from such a small nation, with a glorious past but rather on the fringes of that big cauldron many reverently call the "global show business".

Even "world music" is a catch-all term into which a bit of everything is thrown, but the way Portugal, favored also by its geographical position as a balcony on the Atlantic, has managed to assimilate the explosion of ethnic music on a global level, is an intelligent and particularly successful combination of elements of the national tradition (especially fado, but also peasant dances) and exotic influences whose origin dates back to the innumerable relations established, since the time of great navigations and the colonial empire, with vast areas of the world, more or less remote.

All this has produced a kind of renaissance of Portuguese music, whose sole ambassador abroad for many decades had been the fado queen Amalia Rodrigues, great in her painful intensity, but tenaciously tied to her own tradition and thus perceived by most as a typical phenomenon of her country. What Dulce Pontes and the Madredeus of Teresa Salgueiro share, however, is a more international language, capable of penetrating the armors of distrust with which the average taste tends to defend itself from anything too closely linked to a foreign culture. Completing the picture of affinities between Dulce Pontes and Teresa Salgueiro is the inevitable stamp of "heir of Amalia Rodrigues", the extraordinary vocal qualities and a gentle charm, very different from the vulgar beauty that now reigns, and not only in car bodywork calendars.

Quite sharp artistic differences emerge instead. Teresa's ethereal and sublime voice captures and cradles you like a long Atlantic wave; Dulce's incisive and sensual voice strikes you, sweeps you away like a storm surge, again naturally of the Atlantic. The instrumental backdrop over which Teresa's perfect warbles rise, aside from the recent useless addition of the synth, is clear and crystalline, based on the intertwining of a pair of guitars; Dulce's restless and mutable voice is instead supported, in addition to the almost constant presence of an acoustic guitar and a classic string quartet, by an almost petergabrielian assortment of unusual ethnic instruments like the Basque harmonium (trikitixa) or the harp of Madagascar, just to name two.

Considered by many to be Dulce Pontes' masterpiece, "O primeiro canto" arrives in 1999 at the end of an irresistible progression, which through the excellent "Lagrimas" and the other masterpiece "Caminhos", in just a few years elevated this great singer once and for all to the rank of a true musician, who unlike Teresa Salgueiro composes a significant part of the music herself, moreover with an attention to detail you wouldn't expect from someone who declares herself "more interested in feelings than in technique". The pop repertoire of the beginnings, which served more than anything to gain experience, is a blemish now completely erased, even if some overly strict purist still reproaches her for it.

"O primeiro canto" is based on the four primordial elements, seen as cardinal points and each represented by a piece placed in a strategic position. The beginning is shocking: "Alma guerreira (Fogo)", or Fire. Dulce's vocal tension immediately diverts us from the illusory initial impression of a placid acoustic ballad: fueled by the gusts of the string quartet and the saxophone of guest star Wayne Shorter, violent bursts of piercing highs rise to assume diabolic contours, so much so that a prayer will intervene at the end to extinguish them. It's hard not to think of Manuel De Falla's "Ritual Fire Dance", inspired by the magic and spells of Andalusian gypsies. After such a start, the melancholic suffering of "Fado-Mãe", the most traditional track on the album, seems almost restful. In "Tirioni" the obsessive repetitiveness of a hopeless folk song is broken by prolonged breaths at the end of each stanza. "O primeiro canto" is the metamorphosis of a nursery rhyme with light guitar arpeggios into an angry primordial chant, with Trilok Gurtu's drums frolicking in a race with a Dulce possessed by the demon of tribal rhythm. Just close your eyes to see her dance without inhibitions, just like in concerts.

"O que for, há-de ser (Ar)" is the Air, and Dulce's voice truly seems to remain suspended for long moments to trace the design of a melody of unsettling beauty, which captivates the listener just like the "air" of an opera. The piano and string quartet accompany with classic and discreet elegance. The time for a lively village chat ("Modinha das Saias") with the gossips (Maria João and Gemma Bertagnolli), and the mood returns to that dramatic fado, with "Garça perdida", opened by the flamenco acrobatics of the excellent guitarist Jesse Cook and continued by Dulce with a voice that at times seems almost broken by emotion. "Velha Chica" is a delightful duet with Angolan Waldemar Bastos, whose nasal voice evokes an African Pino Daniele, black not only halfway and naturally completely unknown in these latitudes. Behind a charming portrait of an old lady lies a depiction of the poverty and suffering in distant Angola, a Portuguese-speaking country. "Ai Solidom", with its crackling gypsy band wind instruments, seems born from an encounter with the picturesque Slavic world of Goran Bregovic.

"Suite da Terra" conveys the vibrations of a living Earth, breathing in unison with the repeated strokes of a magical guitar arpeggio that seems projected towards infinity, a regular and sparse pattern that leaves wide openings for Dulce's imaginative vocal inventions and for the incredible "liquid" sounds of Trilok Gurtu's percussion. Perhaps the most enchanted moment of an album that has many. A fleeting glance towards the rural hinterland with the choral "É tão grande o Alentejo" and immediately the fresh energy of "Pátio dos Amores" is unleashed, a whirlwind of voice and guitar, lively like a "Villanesca" by Enrique Granados and capable of inducing even the most reluctant (like myself) to dance, or rather to some awkward undefined movement. With "Porto de mágoas" we are again deeply immersed in the poignant melancholy of fado; it's not difficult for a few tears to flow, just to prepare the ground for what the learned call the final catharsis, which is accomplished in the sign of Water. "Ondeja (Agua)" is a triumph of transparency and purity, an incursion by the earthly Dulce Pontes into the empires usually frequented by the angelic Teresa Salgueiro, and above all, yet another brilliant showcase, perhaps the most astonishing, of her vocal versatility, expressed in a series of vocalises so expressive as to need no text. As in the other "Air" of the album, the sober contribution of the piano and string quartet splendidly completes the picture, leaving us from the listening blinded and a bit dazed by such beauty.

In conclusion, much more than an album: rather an experience of the senses that helps rediscover a close relationship with the Earth, with the concrete matter represented by those four elements and their mixture, that mud which on the cover covers Dulce Pontes transforming her into a strange being, perhaps from prehistoric times, but certainly human.