Lula Pena - Troubadour
ARTIST........: Lula Pena
TITLE.........: Troubadour
LABEL.........: Mbari
URL...........: http://www.myspace.com/lulapena
GENRE.........: Folk
QUALITY:......: 153 kbps avg/ 44100Hz / Joint Stereo
RIP DATE......: 2011-03-24
RELEASE DATE..: 2010-06-00
Tracklist:
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01. Acto I 12:40
02. Acto II 5:51
03. Acto III 7:50
04. Acto IV 8:26
05. Acto V 11:10
06. Acto VI 9:04
07. Acto VII 3:18
Total 58:19
Release Notes:
It was gratifying to be able to include Lula PenaÆs wonderful Troubadour in the
PopMattersÆ Best World Music albums of 2010. For those of us who rely primarily
on recordings to hear her work, it had been a long wait since 1998's classic
[phados]. Here is what I wrote for the world music feature:
2010 proved to be another successful year for Portuguese fado and its
derivatives. The fourth album by the brilliant young fadista Ana Moura received
international distribution, while the second album by Deolinda was met with only
marginally less acclaim than the groupÆs debut. But the real surprise came with
the long-awaited follow-up to singer-guitarist Lula PenaÆs classic 1998 album
[phados]. Troubadour followed closely in its predecessorÆs footsteps, offering
up a stark, haunted take on fado that took in Portuguese folk music, French
chanson, Latin American nueva canci≤n and Anglo-American pop, all stripped down
to the wood. Over seven longish ôActsö, Pena wove fragments from other writers
into her own songs, using voice, guitar, and silence to mesmeric effect. Her
take on the Amßlia Rodrigues classic ôFado de Cada Umö is startling, as is the
closing number that mixes two distinctly non-fado songs, Eden AhbezÆs ôNature
Boyö and MirahÆs ôPollenö.
I would only add here that Troubadour is, in my opinion, one of the best albums
of 2010 regardless of genre or marketing category. It made it into the general
lists of Best Albums that I submitted to the two music sites I write for
(PopMatters and Tiny Mix Tapes) but would have been too obscure a treasure to
have made it onto the main lists of those sites. It is at times such as this
that otherwise problematic categories such as ôworld musicö can be useful, in
providing a space for otherwise marginalised sounds. Credit should go to
PopMatters, too, for consistently encouraging the coverage of international
music on its pages. (Troubadour received critical acclaim in Portugal, featuring
in the Best of 2010 lists of Time Out and Blitz, among other places.)