Ways to Paradise
 

BY CINDY McGLYNN

If guitarist Pedro Ayres Magalhães and the members of Madredeus played the same instruments, had the same talents and the same sensibilities but didn't come from Lisbon, would they still be Madredeus? To hear Magalhães' answer is to realize that's like asking if you would still be yourself if you had different parents. The link is that strong.

"I live in Lisbon. I was born there. I live many loves of my life there and the streets, I walk them and they take me to friends and take me home from concerts. I have always lived for Lisbon, so the city is in my heart."

The city is also, indelibly, in the music of Madredeus, whose music has an otherworldly beauty that will make you feel lonely for Portugal whether you've been there or not. Formed in 1985 by Magalhães and Rodrigo Leão, the group began as a loose collection of musicians trying to escape the tedium of straight-up Portuguese pop music. Magalhães himself is a classically trained guitarist who also had a yen to give voice to the rhythms of the city that so inspired him, and to the subtleties of Portuguese culture that couldn't begin to be heard in three chords. Also, he says he always figured that "the life of a classical guitarist is lonely and very sad. And I did not want to spend my life in a school or in a cultural institution. I didn't want to be a teacher. I want to write songs and create new paintings about reality with my songs."

Composing on acoustic guitars (but soon expanding to include synthesizers and cellos) and writing about Portuguese themes in Portuguese, Magalhães set about finding the voice that could make his musical paintings come to life. The story goes that they met their singer, Teresa Salgueiro, after overhearing her singing Portuguese folk music in a small café.

"I was in Brazil," Magalhães says, "and my friends were in Lisbon. We all had this idea of finding a singer and they phoned me and said, 'We think we have found her.' It was the most crazy thing because they met me at the airport with just a tape of her voice and in the first 15 seconds, I could tell that she was incredible."

At 19 years old, Salgueiro had the voice they wanted -- which rapidly grew from that of gifted but tentative young woman, to a hauntingly moving Portuguese über-voice which Magalhães says contains the essence of all his countrywomen.

Magalhães is frank in saying he writes Madredeus music for Teresa (whose voice he actually says he has come to "worship") and says many of the songs explore the uniquely Portuguese notion of the saudade. "It is something like an accepted loneliness," he explains. "Like a distance between you and the one that you love -- a distance that will always be there. It has been an inspiration for many poets and philosophers, I think, and it is the centre of the Portuguese soul."

The Portuguese soul is an inexhaustible well, as far as Magalhães is concerned, and has spun it out into five albums for Madredeus. Filmmaker Wim Wenders -- whose Lisbon Story featured acres of footage of the band playing -- loves them and so does most of Europe, but the band have yet to open many doors in North America. (Their first tour here was only last year.)

And while saying it would take forever to complete an exploration of Portuguese culture, Magalhães is still not against introducing changes to his expression or to his exploration. For instance, on the band's latest record, O Paraiso (Metro Blue/EMI), they've included an electric bass, which may be what gives the record more of a pop edge than some of their past work.

Another change is in the way O Paraiso was recorded. In the past Madredeus worked much the same way a rock band did -- lyrics and melody were basically presented to the band, who improvised arrangements that were later polished. O Paraiso was offered up as a fully completed musical score and is, Magalhães says, as close to capturing the pure essence of Lisbon and the Portuguese spirit as Madredeus has come.

"The Paradise, this was so clear, this work. The poetry of the music and the world of saudades and the message of my people are all very well concentrated," Magalhães says, describing what should have been, in his opinion, a double record. "In the beginning everything was like a dream and this dream is achieved with the Paradise. This is really the music of Madredeus."

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