| Ricardo Ribeiro - Porta do Coração |
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Ricardo Ribeiro's fado is made of contradictions. Those good
contradictions that in a lower artist would be fatal because it would
prove to be non-sense or inconsistent but in a great performer rather represent a complex and delicate
balance of multiple dynamics that will crisscross to weave a web of
fine and enchanting ways and affections.
Those contradictions that always defy simplistic readings, the clichés of routine, the easy labels. Ricardo Ribeiro's fado is an intelligent fado, someone who maturely reflects on what is to sing, who meditates on how the melodies and texts, which identifies the key expressive points, support the rhythmic accentuation of words that have to be chained together in a single breath and those that have to be framed by silence, moments of emotional outburst and discrete interiority. But at the same time is an instinctive Fado , passionate, in which this reflection is only to channel an inner fire that erupts as an uncontrolled flame but burns, without losing its intensity, along a route always lucidly dominated. Ricardo Ribeiro's fado is an old one, with a lineage assumed with pride in the great masters of the past - Marceneiro and Maurcio, in particular - but who knows to learn from them in the most lucid and respectful way, which is never try to imitate but rather to understand the true essence of what was their greatness and play today what was his journey of constant discovery. So it is always a new Fado in the revisitation of the classical repertoire made at every moment with new interpretations, new perplexities, new questions, new answers, new risks. Ricardo Ribeiro's fado is popular, full of roots in the memories of Lisbon's "little people" that Fernão Lopes wrote about, with echoes of the arabs, gypsies and black people, hovering over sailor's prayers and cries of their wives. But is also a noble fado, austere, solemn, tragic, that clearly marks the presence of a great artist and a great lord. |
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