16.9.11

Saudade

   
Dona Rosa - Segredos
2003

Tracks:
       
1.      Green Corn (Milho Verde)       4:24        
2.      Gum Collector (Resineiro)       4:54        
3.      Lemon Balm (Erva-Cidreira)       3:57        
4.      Dream (Dona Rosa Talks About A Dream)       0:25        
5.      Laurindinha       4:01        
6.      Put Your Little Foot In Here (Ponha Aqui O Seu Pézinho)       3:14        
7.      Libon (Lisboa)       1:04        
8.      Mariquitas       3:16        
9.      Green Are The Fields (Verdes Sao Os Campos)       3:24        
10.      Kiss (Beijinho)       3:14        
11.      Trust (Dona Rosa Talks About Confidence)       0:48        
12.      The Girl Was In Tears / A Moça Chorava       6:09        
13.      Oh Branch, What A Beautiful Branch / O Rama O Que Linda Rama       3:59        
14.      I Was Baptized By Rose / De Rosa Fui Baptizada       1:26        
15.      Variations In Major's Dream / Variaçoes Em Sonho Maior       6:07
       
Accompanied by:

Enzo D'Aversa, accordion,
Raul Abreu, Portuguese guitar, bass, piano, and percussion
 
♫☆`*♥¸¸.•*¨*•♫☆`*♥¸¸.•*¨*•♫
        
        
♫☆`*♥¸¸.•*¨*•☆♫`*♥¸¸.•*¨*•♫
  
Besides Fados DONA ROSA sings traditional Portuguese songs that have been significant for her life.

Even today fairy tales still happen - tales that read as if they were straight out of the Arabian Nights. This is the miraculous story of the blind Fado singer DONA ROSA of Lisbon:

In 1999 a Portuguese production company was asked to find a Fado singer for an Austrian Television Company production to be recorded in Marrakesh. The programme..s musical director, the well-known Viennese artist and impresario Andr.. Heller, had a particular blind street singer in mind, a woman he had heard many years ago, whose voice had moved him deeply and haunted his memory ever since. The search proved to require quite some detective work but finally she was found - DONA ROSA.

With her live presentation at the World Music Fair WOMEX in Berlin in the year 2000, a whole new experience of life began for DONA ROSA. This was the first audience that was interested in her, as a person, for her own sake. She was confronted with all kinds of things that affected her life, disconcerted her, raised doubts in her mind: Her life changed dramatically. DONA ROSA was no longer accepted as a street singer in Lisbon. The other street and survival artists told her she was a star, expecting her to have lots of money now. Her story appeared on the front page of the Portuguese newspaper Publica (12/2000), Germany's Channel 1 (ARD) produced a documentary on her for its television programme "Kulturreport", concerts in Germany, France, Italy, England, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic, Austria and Switzerland followed. Since then, DONA ROSA has given 200 concerts in Europe and become familiar with things that were a total mystery to her in her previous life, things like airplanes.

Our understanding of the world is influenced strongly by what we see. DONA ROSA had to learn to trust things, people and situations that are taken as a matter of course for those with the power of sight. This over 40-year-old singer had to learn things other people are entirely familiar with - for example the strains of a life on tour, far from one's habitual surroun- dings.

Following one of her concerts, in the dressing room of the concert hall, the conversation once again revolved around her blindness. DONA ROSA said: "What I like to do best is dream; in my dreams I can see and I never want to wake up."
 
  
Who is Dona Rosa?

She was born on February 1, 1957 in poverty. At the age of four she contracted a severe case of meningitis to which she lost her eyesight. Her family, whose only means of livelihood was begging, could not easily accept the child’s handicap but managed to provide a basic education for her. She learned to read and write and carry out simple manual tasks ... and she became acquainted with the traditional songs of Portugal.
   
When she came of age she realised that she must leave her family for good: The day she arrived home in North Portugal she turned around and took the next train back to Lisbon.

There, with the help of other blind homeless persons, she quickly learned to master the art of survival on the street. What she didn’t earn by selling magazines and lottery tickets she earned by begging, until the day somebody suggested she use her beautiful voice as a means of livelihood.

And so there emerged on the streets of Lisbon a singer who sensitively translated her bitter fate into music. Gradually, Dona Rosa became an inseparable element of the cityscape.

Today, accompanied by a triangle once given her by a friend, she sings her own special brand of Fado. More so than traditional Fado, her song gives expression to all of the misery suffered by the poorest of the poor, and to their profound longing for the good life they will never call their own.
 

  
 
...my best wishes go to Jerez de la Frontera...
 
for you I will keep posting
 

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