Sometimes it’s worth remembering that what is world music to one music lover is pop music to another. Portuguese four-piece Deolinda’s first album, Canção ao lado, spent nearly two years at the top of the charts at home, so there are an awful lot of people who see this band as pop music. This must also make it strange for the band themselves who, presumably, play sizeable venues in Portugal, only to find themselves in front of a London crowd of less than 300 at the Jazz Café last night. And to add one final twist, this London crowd seemed to be largely made up of Portuguese fans.
But unlike left-field French pop person Camille, who pulled a spoilt-child face when she realised she was playing to a mostly French audience at the same venue a few years ago, Deolinda's singer, Ana Bacalhau, showed no signs of disappointment at the idea that she was in for a night of preaching to the converted rather than winning over a new audience. Half a dozen songs in, she said in perfectly enunciated English, “This next song asks all of you to unplug yourselves from all the Facebooks and Twitter and live life in the old-fashioned way.” It seemed to work, as there were enough technology-free hands to clap along enthusiastically to the up-tempo “Um contra o outro” - a fairly typical number that lightly skipped along, buoyed up by a fast walking bass line and Bacalhau’s typically involved vocal performance.
Flanked by her band of two acoustic guitarists and a double-bass player, Bacalhau is something of a surprise given the rather polite, restrained impression one gets of her from the band’s second album Dois selos e um carimbo (Two Stamps and a Seal). The musical arrangements are all about understated, muted playing which acts as a delicate framework for her captivating central role. It was clear from the album’s lyrics that each song was a mini-narrative brimming over with wit and surreal asides - even the band’s name has an elaborate background story: Deolinda is a cheerful fictional spinster living in a ground-floor flat in the suburbs of Lisbon. The goings-on she observes night and day from her window inspire the songs she writes which – to take this fanciful scenario full circle – are presumably the songs Deolinda (the band not the spinster) played last night.
Watch the video for "Fado Toninho"
But despite having all this going for them, I went to see Deolinda last night not entirely convinced by their recorded work. Although much of the material was seductively, hauntingly melodic, and the less-is-more acoustic arrangements demonstrated great skill and restraint, there seemed to be something missing. That something turned out to be the visual presence of Bacalhau. She struts and glides about the stage, a gesture, a facial expression, a shoulder shrug, even a little three-second dance, all providing a visual semaphore of each line of lyric, adding a further dimension to it. With a lesser singer this flirting with the overtly theatrical could have horribly backfired. But Bacalhau’s absolute immersion in the songs is so apparent that one sees her histrionics as simply stagecraft.
By their own admission, Deolinda don’t play Fado but they are clearly hugely influenced by it. This mournful Portuguese genre, these days most famously represented by the statuesque Mariza, feels like a peripheral yet essential element in Deolinda’s music. It’s as if they are saying nostalgia and longing are all very well, but today is another day, the sun is shining, so let’s just enjoy this world. Last night’s Jazz Café crowd certainly took onboard this philosophy, clapping and singing along at every opportunity. So next time Deolinda visit our shores, I sincerely hope a few more of Mariza’s sizeable UK audience check them out. They really do deserve your patronage.
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