Saturday
Night on BBC London 94.9 FM
29
November 03
Katia
Guerreiro + The Tension Mounting Boys
How
many fado singers can a radio DJ fall for, before being accused of serial
infidelity? Already bedazzled by Mariza and hypnotized by Lula Pena, tonight
I fell under the spell of Katia Guerreiro, who sang three songs as a taster
for her sell-out performance at the Purcell Rooms on Tuesday. Katia’s
album, Fado Maior, is agreeable enough but fails to do justice to the
warmth and passion of her voice, and the formality of the traditional
fado songs cannot convey her mischievous humour. If only I could pronounce
her second name properly – in Portuguese, the combination ‘Gu’
results in a sound somewhere between ‘g’, ‘h’
and ‘w’, and I never did get it right.
Katia’s three musicians
played with the verve and virtuosity we have come to expect from fado
accompanists, and they were in turn fascinated by the flair of our other
live guests, Colin Bass and Ben Mandelson, billed tonight as the Tension
Mounting Boys to reflect their growing apprehension at playing live on
the radio. Since their days together in the 3 Mustaphas 3 they have mostly
worked in separate ventures (Colin as a hit song writer in Indonesia,
Ben as a producer and also as a Bloke with Billy Bragg). Tonight Colin
sang an early Willie Nelson song and one of his own, while Ben discovered
ways to surprise us, playing two different guitars.
It would be more professional if I researched my guests before, rather than after, their visits, but here's what I've found out since. Katia's mother is Angolan, her father Portuguese, and she grew up in the Azores before moving to Lisbon at the age of 18. She is a fully qualified doctor, working at a hospital 150 kilometres south of Lisbon, whose administrators enable her to maintain this parallel career as a singer. Using his alias Sabah Habas Mustapha, Colin Bass presents a weekly world music radio programme "Sabah am Sonntag" on the German station, Radio Multi Kulti, which can be heard at any time at the website www.multikulti.de where my Saturday Night programme can also be heard two weeks after its first broadcast on BBC London.
I
get a special pleasure watching the reactions of guest musicians to the
records played before, between and after their performances, as they begin
to take in the bizarre range of the programme in which they have found
themselves. Sometimes the musicians are simply bewildered, but Katia’s
team was particularly enthusiastic, gazing with incredulity at the picture
spread in the booklet of Deliverance by Bubba Sparxxx, depicting him as
the tattooed redneck of your worst nightmares. Confirming that appearances
can be deceptive, Deliverance vies with Boomerang by Daara J as hip hop
album of the year.
Hearing
‘Po’ Boy’ from Bob Dylan’s latest album Love and
Theft, Katia’s bass player Rodrigo noticed similarities with Tom
Waits. Which mirrored my own reactions when I saw Dylan playing live for
the first time the previous Monday at the Hammersmith Apollo (formerly
Odeon, as it will ever remain written in my bones). The first surprise
was that Dylan didn’t touch a guitar but played keyboards throughout
the show, standing stage left and sideways so that he could look at his
band rather than at us. I had heard that he was liable to play some songs
in such a perversely different way that I might either not recognise or
hate the reinterpretations, but that was never a problem. A man standing
next to me helpfully identified the ones I didn’t know, and I found
myself playing a game of my own as it began to seem that each song was
delivered in the style of a different group, mostly from the early seventies:
Flying Burrito Brothers, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Allman Brothers,
Steppenwolf. Great fun.
Many thanks to Miguel Santos,
promoter of the Atlantic Waves Festival, for arranging the visit of Katia
(as he has previously done for Mariza and Lula Pena).
These
shows are now streamed
for a week, almost immediately after the transmission.We broadcast from
8 to 10 every Saturday Night on BBC London on 94.9 FM in the London area
and worldwide at www.bbc.co.uk/london
Guest
images by Philip Ryalls. |
