Mísia is a Portuguesefado singer. Mísia is a polyglot. Despite singing mostly fado, she has sung some of her themes in Spanish, French, Catalan, English, and even Japanese.
Parentage
Mísia's mother was Catalan and used to be a cabaret dancer, which accounts for many of the influences that shaped her music: tango, bolero, the use of Portuguese guitar with accordion, violin and the piano.
Style
Throughout her career, Mísia developed a new style: she modernized Amália Rodrigues's fado, shocking orthodox audiences by adding to the traditional instruments the sensuality of the accordion and the violin, and borrowing their finest verses from the greatest Portuguese poets.
Recordings
Her first album was released in 1990, at a time when, even at home in Portugal, fado was a poor career choice for a singer. With the exception of Amália Rodrigues and Carlos do Carmo, there was no audience for "fadistas". Nevertheless, Mísia went on to record an album respecting all the traditional features of the genre, including poems from popular fado songwriters, such as Joaquim Frederico de Brito or José Niza, alongside poems by famous Portuguese poets, such as José Carlos Ary dos Santos, and even a piece from Vinicius de Moraes's song, "Samba em Prelúdio". The album bore her name, "Mísia", and was very well received by both audience and critics outside Portugal, mainly in France. The album was followed by "Fado" in 1993, in which she maintained her decision to use lyrics by popular writers and poets. This time she sang songs by Sérgio Godinho, Amália Rodrigues, along with poems from António Lobo Antunes, Rosa Lobato de Faria and even a text by future Nobel prize winner José Saramago. In 1995, she recorded "Tanto Menos Tanto Mais", which combines the texture of classical fado instruments, the Portuguese guitar, the acoustic guitar and the bass, with that of the violin, the accordion, the piano and even the harp. Once more, she sang António Lobo Antunes, but also Fernando Pessoa and :pt:João Monge|João Monge, one of the most appreciated Portuguese lyrics-writer. The first album to be released in the USA was "Garras dos Sentidos" in 1998. The concept of this album was to use lyrics by famous Portuguese poets with melodies belonging to Traditional Fado. This way, Mísia not only sang text by past poets like Fernando Pessoa, Mário de Sá Carneiro, Natália Correia or António Botto but also contemporary poets like José Saramago and Mário Cláudio, and she also invited two writers to write poems for the album, Agustina Bessa-Luís, who wrote the lyrics for the titletrack, and Lídia Jorge, whose main poem, Fado Do Retorno is sung in two versions: track 4 with piano, accordion, violin and double bass, and track 11 with Portuguese guitar, acoustic guitar, bassa, double bass, violin and accordion. Her 1999 album, "Paixões Diagonais" again used songs from a variety of writers, from :pt:João Monge|João Monge, Amélia Muge, Antonio dos Santos or Vitorino Salomé, to Rosa Lobato de Faria or Sérgio Godinho. In 2001, she decided to pay a tribute to Amália Rodrigues, after the latter's death, and recorded "Ritual", where all the songs were recorded as traditional three-instrument fados. Her 2003 album, Canto, may be considered as her masterpiece. Mixing pieces of the best works of the Portuguese guitarist Carlos Paredes with poems by Vasco Graça Moura, Mísia created a musical work she would describe as belonging to her "gallery of impossible things". In her 2005 Album Drama Box, Mísia depicts herself as a cabaret dancer living in the "Drama Box Hotel" with her musicians. In her 2009 album, Ruas Mísia goes beyond the boundaries of the fado. The first part of the double album, "Lisboarium" is an imaginary journey through Lisbon, expressed in fado. The second part, "Tourists", however, contains performances by Mísia of very different kinds of music. It includes music in Turkish, Spanish, English and French. The concept is non-fado music that according to Mísia has the "fado soul". An example of this is her version of "Hurt", originally by Nine Inch Nails but inspired by the version by Johnny Cash.
