Ramana Vieira: Tudo de Mim (All of Me)

No doubt it has been some time since a listener of a pop-fado recording has been treated to a rendition of Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria" complete with lyrics based on the prayer. The singer is Ramana Vieira, a product of San Leandro, CA, of a family of Portuguese origins. Paired with "Trago Fado Nos Sentidos," a song one easily imagined coming from a night spot in Lisbon or Madrid, the remarkable plasticity of the culture that produced such music, blending the sacred and the (mildly) profane is somehow striking. No less is "Please Love Me Forever" a part of the package, a mixture that works because of Vieira's sweetly mournful voice. Or "Fado La La La,' either in vocal or instrumental track. While there are other fado singers with a jazz bent or more chops, no one has successfully attempted what Vieira does.

While Tudo de Mim is sung in both English and Portuguese, it crosses genres and defies simple description. "World music " or "contemporary fado" are not adequate for a working artist in Northern California with time in Portugal whose lyrics refer to the jacarandas found in Hawaii, Mexico and elsewhere. Vieira has been doing this kind of work for some time. This, her third album in two decades, is perhaps both her most imaginative and mature. Despite California roots, she is well travelled and plays confident piano as well, so the recording is altogether a pleasant experience. Really, here one finds part of a journey of self-discovery on several levels: artistic, personal, and ethnic. Vieira clearly has a loyal ethnic following in the community.

Recordings like this are increasingly part of the second-generation immigrant experience. They seek to conserve and assimilate traditions, and to innovate, or to remember, but simultaneously to move ahead. Vieira, well trained but really quite relaxed, is perfectly cast in the role of a cultural interpreter. Well known to Portuguese American audiences, she deserves a broader, more diverse one in the United States as well.

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