Portuguese singer, guitarist, composer, and poet Lula Pena has released only three records over the last two decades, but partially through highly-regarded live performances, her expansion of the Fado style and exploration of numerous complementary genres has brought her a devoted and fully deserved international following. Documenting an evolving brilliance and depth of artistry, every segment in her trim discography provides an experience worth savoring; the latest is Archivo Pittoresco, and it’s freshly out on CD and digital through Crammed Discs.
Lula Pena is often associated with Fado, or as she prefers to spell it, phado, and the connection is understandable, although it’s necessary to clarify that she extends from tradition rather than being contained by it. Broadening her personal style with French chanson, Cape Verdean morna, Anglo-American pop and folk, Latin American nueva canción, bossa nova, flamenco, blues, ’60s Portuguese folk and more, she eludes a potential quagmire of hodgepodge for a unified intensity.
In addition to her native Portuguese, Pena has sung in Spanish, English, French, Greek, and Italian while enhancing her own lyrics and poems with writing from disparate cultural sources. Armed with just guitar and alto voice, her debut Phados was released on CD in 1998 through Carbon 7 Records; even to non-Fado specialists such as this writer, her intermingling of knowledge-based richness and eschewal of reverence is quickly apparent.
It’s there in the vocal wind sounds at the close of “Senhora do Almortão/ As 7 mulheres do Minho,” in the aged warmth of “Perdidamente,” and in her deft, frequently percussive guitar style and assured vocal strength from start to finish. Fado is a style fairly associated with mournfulness, heartbreak, strife, and regret, and to excel at its tricky emotional terrain requires maturity, sincerity, and mastery; Phados established all three, but even with the gap of 12 years, the assured power and growth of her follow-up is still striking.
Troubadour came out on CD in 2010 via the Mbari Musica label, consisting of seven “acts” and finding Pena spreading out as a few of the multifaceted sections (the opener alone delivering three distinct segments) approach or exceed ten minutes. She’s described her music as the past and the future meeting in the present, and all the evidence one needs is right here on this disc; there is a sweet take of “Queen of the Fado” Amália Rodrigues’ “Fado de Cada Um,” and the closing number combines Eden Ahbez’s “Nature Boy” and Mirah’s “Pollen.”
It’s important to note that the new transforms the old without disrupting it, a state of affairs that continues with her new CD Archivo Pittoresco, though opener “Poema / Poème” registers as relatively contemporary. It begins with a text in French by Pena followed by a poem from Belgian surrealist Louis Scutenaire (hence the slash mark), and the tough strumming, vibrant harmonics and continued percussiveness of the guitar takes on an alluring late-night atmosphere given even deeper resonance through the urgency of voice.
Pena’s track-by-track notes lend valued enlightenment; “Pesadelo da história,” which sources a text by contemporary Brazilian poet Ronaldo Augusto, heightens the rhythmic approach as her singing takes flight. Even without the info she imparts, it would be clear that “Ojos, si quereis vivir” is a song of considerable vintage (from the 17th or 18th century in fact), though after a splendid instrumental passage she shifts into a more modern setting without a hitch.
Even as it’s broken into thirteen tracks, Pena’s designed Archivo Pittoresco to be one long piece, and the tactic works; “Las penas,” which is based on an Edison recording of Mexican origin with lyrics concerning desire, springs out of “Ojos, si quereis vivir,” a song that relates to spiritual matters. A few of the CD’s fadeouts do arrive too early, but the winddown of “Las penas” is heard in full. Next is “Rose” by Ederaldo Gentil, a contemporary Brazilian composer who died last year, and it attains a suitable and affecting Latin-ish groove as Pena hits another vocal peak.
Throughout, her guitar playing is no less impressive, especially the fingerpicking that elevates Chilean songwriter and ethnomusicologist Violeta Parra’s “Ausencia” to standout status. From there the landscape shifts to Greece via composer and music theorist Manos Hadjidakis’ “Pes mou mia lexi” and then travels to Sardinia for the traditional “A diosa (No potho reprosare).”
Individually brief, Pena’s solo orientation maintains energy as she never loses a handle on her personal approach. Again, the diversity resists becoming a mere cultural grab-bag, with “A diosa (No potho reprosare)” even gathering a hint of the poppish. It segues well into the exquisitely pretty one-two combo punch of “O ouro e a Madeira” and “Cantiga de amigo,” the latter deriving from the medieval period, or in Pena’s words “the time of the troubadours.” As it unwinds, it’s easy to imagine it being played by a bard strolling through a village.
“Deus é grande” spreads out to almost five minutes, its root a Portuguese poem of spiritual theme and its structure mirrored by the slightly lengthier “Breviário,” its words borrowed from the Brazilian woman essayist Jerusa Pires Ferreira. The two halves cohere into a meditative groove and effectively set the plate for closer “Come Wander with Me,” a tune Pena nabbed from an episode of the TV series The Twilight Zone (originally sung by actress Bonnie Beecher, who changed her name to Jahanara after she married hippie-era mainstay Wavy Gravy).
Teaming edgy and brightly hued folk guitar with a vocal heartiness that frankly eludes nearly all singing strummers past and present, it delivers a superb finale to a CD of eclectic flow. Lula Pena’s measured recording approach has probably limited her audience, but it’s clear that it inspires success. Archivo Pittoresco isn’t quite as remarkable as Troubadour, but it doesn’t fall short that achievement by much. Listeners attracted to international sounds will not want to miss it.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
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