SAMARABALOUF

Mariana was born under the Dakar sun, although her parents were from the island of Sao
Vicente in Cape Verde. The music she bathed in from childhood had a Cape Verdean beat, since her father, Toy Ramos (aka Toy de Bibia), played guitar for the famous group “Voz de Cabo-Verde”.

For a few years, Mariana strayed from her native tradition in a search for other musical worlds, discovering everything from Nougaro to Jonasz, Piaf to Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan to Rickie Lee Jones. However, she finally returned to her island roots when she met Teofilo Chantre and Nazalio Fortes, two young Cape Verdean songwriters. She naturally combined her newfound international influences with Cape Verdean tradition and this set her on the artistic course that would lead to her first album, “Di dor em or”, released in April 2000. During this period, she regularly appeared in concert at the New Morning, the Bataclan, the Cafe de la Danse and on tour in Africa, Italy and Greece, also performing on stage with Tito Paris and Teofilo Chantre, and filling a support slot for Souad Massi.

Her sensual voice and body language won her a special place in the rainbow of Cape Verdean music. Based on her hybrid heritage, her repertoire bridged tradition and modernity in a subtle blend of jazz notes, Brazilian music and African sounds.
Mariana celebrated morna (Cape Verdean blues), coladera, mazurka and funana (a highly original dance for couples locked tight in a torrid embrace) in her own individual fashion. Her stage presence won her a singing and acting role in the play “Oye Luna”, first performed in Cape Verde.

If its the first two discs which makes known her like a new promising voices of Cape Verde, Mariana Ramos affirm herself with this third opus, at the same time free and personal. Mariana composed and writes six new songs out of the fifteen titles proposed of which MORNADOR, the maker of Morna, the morna indicating these rates/rhythms melancholic persons and nostalgic which ensured the notoriety of the Cape-Verdean music in the whole world. For the remainder of the repertory, it called upon composers Cape-Verdeans contemporaries: Teofilo Cantor, celebrates it singer and type-setter of Cesaria Evora, with which Mariana finds for a moving duet; Jorge Humberto, the poet of Mindelo; Servant boy Ge Mendès, with the cosmopolitan music; Toy de Bibia, of the mythical group of traditional music Voz de Cabo de Verde. This choice is not innocent; She innovated by proposing a new rhythm, that of Morna slow which approaches the blues, with in no-claims bonus, at the end of the disc, the traditional versions which are the source. In more of the traditional instruments like the cavaquinho, the complaint of the double bass and subtle play of the notes of piano impose throughout the album a jazzy tempo . Of her voice suave, Mariana takes you along in her Cape Verde to it, inspirate by African zouk like Brazilian rhythm of samba.

Because Mariana is resolutely citizen of the world, opened with the interbreedings, inspired by a musical claw where World music takes all its direction! This album offers a broad panorama of sounds which influenced Mariana and towards which, the Cape-Verdienne music can open…