Ainda
Having seen the fair
success of the past review, I feeled myself allowed to write some
other words about another great album of Madredeus: Ainda. Even
if it can appear a simple album, .... well it is. Though, it
remains simple only if we stop to the great pleasure of
listening. If we try to dig in the motivations, in the themes, in
the structure of this album, we can find interesting things. This
is what I've found.
It's not possible to make for Ainda an organic
analysis as for O espirito da paz. Ainda is not a concept
album,.....or maybe it is but in a very complex and criptic way.
There is no general structure of thematic or musical origin. The
reason is linked to the object of its description,....or should I
say objects? Ainda, at the first time strikes us with the beauty
of its songs, but first of all for the strong difference with O
espirito da paz: the tone, the voice, the arrangements. But it
strikes also for great variety of ways of expressions: we can
have the happy mood of Guitarra, the misterious one of O Tejo,
the melancholic one of A Cidade e os Campos, the indecipherable
one of Ainda. One of the less prosaic reasons for all of this is
that while O espirito da paz was written by Pedro, Ainda has been
composed by all the Madredeus.
Lets dig.
The themes of the songs are loose as notes of a failed poet. Ainda actually is a series of personal notes on Lisboa written by one of its inhabitants. But the fact that this notes are so loose makes me think that the inhabitant has become a voyager which discovers for the first time the city and its secrets. The inhabitant see the extraordinariness of the things that has been surrounding him for years, but that never struck him (the sky of Lisboa, that even with the smog remains of an unrepeatable blu; the Tejo; Alfama....). Personally I see Ainda as a failed attempt to undestand something incomprehensible. Lisboa is that....incomprehensible, unique, manifold, earthly, marine, ancient, modern, old, young. Lisboa is manyfold as the incarnations of Pessoa and as the individuality that inhabits it. But the shipwreck of this attempt of comprehension creates the best way to describe this city: the variety, the note, the caos.
But there are others
level of analysis of this work that should be read. Actually,
Ainda carry on in a different direction the path of
O espirito da paz. It analyses Lisboa in the same way in which
the girl of O espirito da paz analysed the world in the second
"movement" (do you remember?). Though, this time, the
world is restricted to Lisboa, where it is actually contained.
Madredeus doesn't care about the monuments, but they care about
the way in which the world penetrates the incredible theatre of
life which is Lisboa: the sky, the river, the love story of
Alfama... All of this is taken as a hint for reflections about
the ego and about the community that, this time, is extended to
the lisbonetans. O Tejo talks about the relation between the
lisbonetans and the author and the river, and the text of Ceu da
Mouraria eventually talks about the people which dreams (the
portughese). As it was in O espirito da paz, the text never
refers to anyone in particular.
The third way of
analysis starts obviously from the title. Pedro said that Ainda
is one of his favourite words, and this fact should make us
think. Ainda means still. How can we read this word in the
context of a composition like this one? The question is not easy.
I think that that word incarnates the spirit that Madredeus had
when they starts their voyage that would take them to a fair
success and to enourmous appreciations of
critics. If we read the story of Madredeus in the years of 1993
and 1994 we can see that under all this voyaging there were a
great curiosity, a great desire to have more but mainly a great
desire to Give more. This is the reason that brought Madredeus to
sustain three years of uninterrupted concerts, contracts with
directors, and other things. This was probably the word that the
young Madredeus heard in their head:
"Ainda....Ainda....Ainda...".
O Tejo is one of the
best songs of Madredeus, but the most intimate sense of the words
remains obscure. The reason for that is in the particular
relationship between the lisbonetans and the Tejo. The Tejo is a
river, but is also the sea; it marks, as Lisboa, the selfgiving
of the earth to the sea. But Portugal has a peaceful relation
with the sea, welcoming it in its shores as life lymph and living
blood. The beating heart of Portugal is the ocean and the
relation of the lisbonetan wih the Tejo is misterious as that
between a father with his daughter.
Ceu da Mouraria is a sunny
song that starts with an invocation to Lisboa, and to its ancient
soul. Though the subject of the songs in the last part became the
portuguese people that dreams in all the dawns of the sun. The
real meaning is obscure but my interpretation is that the dawn is
the symbol of future and that the portuguese people contemplates
the future, continuing to dream that it will return to be the
utopic past that the historians narrates. The relation of the
portuguese with the past is nowadays very particular.
Alfama, splendid song,
absolutely splendid, is a mistery. Infact the divergence between
the title and the theme of the song is great: what does a love
story have in common with Alfama. A song entitled
"Alfama" has a musical structure based on a tango:
nothing related to the fados that every night enlighten this
place. What is the reason? Personally I have a very concrete
idea. Simply, Pedro and Rodrigo knew that this song was beautiful
and they wanted to put it in an album. This song could never
enter in O espirito da paz for obvious reasons, and so they had
to put it in Ainda. The text probably is the original, but in my
opinion the title was originally different. They have to make a
song regarding Alfama and so they entitled this song in that
manner. The other ipotesis is much more literary and noble. Maybe
Pedro tried to describe the feelings that constitutes the
majority of the fado songs that inhabits Alfama. Infact the text
of this song is a typical fado one: it talks about a failed love
of a woman. The Question regarding this song remains alive.
I want to underline the greatness of Viagens
Interditas which is, for me, an enourmous masterpiece. It is a
"flower between two abysses". It proposes a melody of
absolute beauty.
Two songs remains untouched
by all of my analisis: Milagre (my love) and Ainda. This two
songs are not fixable in the rest of the composition. They do not
talk about Lisboa, and of nothing in particular. My opinion is
that maybe this two songs had to be in O Espirito da Paz. Infact
the themes and the atmosphere that these songs create are
absolutely similar to those of the "official album".
Milagre (I love you) should have been probably linked to Vem
because it narrates the prosecution of the love story of this
song, while Ainda should have been linked to the first or second
"movement". Though these are all ipotesis.
In the way
I'm used to do, now that I've finished the most common type of
review, I would like to tell you some word of extremely personal
value. Ainda is the album which makes me became "quite
mad" for Madredeus, but the story of my approach to this
music is long and I don't want to stress you. Though, the bond
that I have with this album is particular and strong. It contains
the songs that I love most and it remembers me a particular
artistic period of Madredeus.
Since I've visited Lisboa
and Portugal last summer, I couldn't prevent from loving it more.
Infact Ainda talks about Lisboa as only Pessoa did. The Poet has
been an inspiration for these artists....I'm sure of this.
But when I listen to Ceu da
Mouraria or O Tejo, I feel myself on the terrace of the castle of
Sao Jorge, watching at the living city below, at the quiet river,
and at the beating of my mad heart. I see myself sitting on the
cannons of the castle with my brother in the best holiday of my
life. I must thank Ainda for all of that. This music makes me
remember and the memories are my most precious jewels. It bring
to my eyes the great images of Wenders, the moment of my
understanding of the timeless beauty of Teresa, her hands moving
ipnotically in the scene of Alfama, her gentle walking in the
scene of O Tejo, her look full of love in the scene of Ceu da
Mouraria. In that moment I feel to be Winter, that materializes
one of his purest dream, Teresa, by listening to her voice.
Yes... because this is the meaning of the final scene: music
makes people meet and love each other. The Music is all, the
Music is Man.
Music
institutional