"It
was summertime and I was
in the Azores, hanging around
the small village my parents
are from. I was looking
out on this very rural setting,
on a road going up a hill.
There was an old man coming
down the hill with a pitchfork
on his shoulder. He was
wearing gum boots, work
pants and a Coca-Cola T-shirt.
I saw that and thought,
That’s my album!"
Quaint tales and obscure
sayings and antique vases
safely encased under museum
glass are all nice relics
of tradition. But the living
history and customs of different
cultures and different times
seem, for singer Nelly Furtado,
as rocking as a Camaro stereo
blaring monster beats.
The timeless and cutting-edge
comprise essential components
of the energetic m?lange
that has made Furtado one
of pop music’s premier
artists. This mix emerges
with an explosive new simplicity
and breadth on Folklore
(set for release Nov. 25,
2003, on DreamWorks Records).
The album is Furtado’s
follow-up to her multiplatinum
debut, Whoa, Nelly! It just
shows how variously and
hard the stuff on Folklore,
as Nelly Furtado imagines
it, can kick.
"This is the folklore
of my mind," Furtado
says. "The word often
conjures up something old,
but I’m kind of flipping
its usual understanding.
Folklore is something magical
and mystical. I like that.
But more than that, I think
of it as a belief in origin.
It’s people’s
stories basically. Everybody
everywhere has his or her
own folklore. It can be
light; it can be dark. And
it doesn’t always
have to come from the past.
The historical part is not
the point. Gossip about
a celebrity? That’s
modern folklore. The story
of Ozzy Osbourne biting
the head off a bat? That’s
folklore as well."
Furtado showed up on the
scene in the fall of 2000,
20 years old, with the release
if her acclaimed debut,
Whoa, Nelly! Radio tracks
such as I’m Like A
Bird and Turn Off The Light,
both Top 10 hits on the
Billboard singles charts,
introduced listeners to
a young Canadian, British
Columbian by birth and Portuguese
by heritage, who brought
a self-styled vibrancy to
the diverse musics she whipped
together: hip-hop, Portuguese
fado, pop, soul, classical,
Brazilian, dance, folk,
Latin and anything else
that seemed expressive and
alive to her.
Working with the production
team of Track and Field
(Gerald Eaton and Brian
West) in Toronto, where
she has lived since her
late teens, Furtado struck
fans and musicians as that
extraordinary thing, a genuinely
real and talented person.
The songs she wrote and
sang in her alert voice
were about feelings old,
new and futuristic; local
and international; serious
and daft; historic and chic;
and the music was as inventively
rhythmic as it was melodic.
For all of this, Furtado
and Whoa, Nelly! were recognized.
Among slews of other citations
and nominations, the Canadian
Juno Awards named Furtado
its Best New Solo Artist
and Best Songwriter in 2001,
and at the 2002 Grammy Awards,
I’m Like A Bird won
Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.
Whoa, Nelly! remained a
presence in the marketplace
for two years, a lifetime
by pop music standards.
But as Folklore demonstrates,
that was only the beginning.
The new album’s songs
produced by Track and Field
and Furtado further develop
the ideas and emotions that
have long compelled Furtado.
And with her ever-upbeat
sense of fusion and generosity,
and without sacrificing
zing or immediacy, her music
continues to ignore the
stylistic restrictions that
can leave pop music stale.
One need look no further
than first radio track Powerless
(Say What You Want) for
evidence of this.
Furtado (signed by DreamWorks
A and R exec Beth Halper)
began Folklore by making
demos of the songs she had
written while headlining
shows across North America
on her 2002 Burn In The
Spotlight Tour. At first,
she worked on her own. "But
then at some point I went,
‘Hmm,’"
Furtado says, "'I miss
working with Track and Field.'
Because I find that, when
I work with them, my music
comes together really quickly,
very effortlessly. And it’s
fun which, above all, music
should be; if you’re
not having fun there’s
no point. So, we started
working together in Santa
Monica [Calif.] last spring."
Furtado realized that her
new songs were somewhat
different from her earlier
material. "I think
I’ve grown a lot,"
she says. "A lot of
the songs on my first album,
I was a teenager still;
I was just kind of writing,
writing away, and hadn’t
experienced all that stuff.
My first album was very
aware of how I didn’t
want to tour with a somber
record. Therefore I recorded
a happy, energetic record
on purpose, because I didn’t
think I was strong enough
to go onstage and stand
behind melancholic songs.
I just wanted to share goodness
and positivity and bright
colours with the world.
Now, I’m stepping
back and understanding that
I can do both; I can still
be positive and yet really
raw and real at the same
time. In the past I’ve
hidden behind a lot of metaphors.
There’s always a veil
in front of that. Now, it’s
more like whoa, whoa, there’s
nothing to hide behind.
I’m far more comfortable
in my skin, I suppose."
Musically Furtado remains
as adventurous as ever,
a product of hip-hop freedom
who still likes the streamlined
U.S. pop and gnarly guitar
rock she grew up on. Yet
she never allows those passions
to close down her thirst
for the reality of folk
and the flair of international
forms. The first song that
ever swept her away was
a tune by an earlier fusion-minded
soul, Prince. The song was
Power Fantastic, which Furtado
encountered on a friend’s
mix tape. "I had never
heard anything like it,"
she remembers. "I think
because it was so very lush
and gorgeous, his voice.
But at the same time, the
level of emotion was high."
Ultimately Furtado would
go on to love the work of
artists as different as
Smashing Pumpkins and Jeff
Buckley, Nusrat Fateh Ali
Khan and Caetano Veloso.
(Veloso, along with banjoist
Bela Fleck and the Kronos
Quartet make guest appearances
on Folklore.)
As the child of Portuguese
parents who immigrated to
Canada, Furtado has always
heard these many genres
through the prism of Portuguese
folk and religious musics.
"I look at music with
a very open mind and really
wide lens," she says.
"When you don’t
have any boundaries, you’re
limitless, you can do anything
because you have no bias.
There’s a difference
between having no bias and
having no taste. You can
navigate your way through
all sorts of genres, which
is what I like to do."
Furtado’s career,
as well as her music, amply
demonstrates this.
In 2001 she sang on a remix
of Missy Misdemeanor Elliot’s
Get Ur Freak On, while in
2002 she recorded Fotografia,
a duet with celebrated,
Grammy-winning Colombian
singer-guitarist Juanes,
which hit #1 on the Latin
charts.
For all her interests,
Furtado remains as rooted
in her Portuguese ancestry,
and her intriguing thoughts
and memories about her heritage
animate Folklore. The church
music she grew up with,
for example, can function
as a musical agent of transcendence.
"I could be at my aunt’s
barbecue," Furtado
explains, "at her house,
in her kitchen, making food,
cooking chicken, drinking
port wine. And someone will
pull out a church book,
a little songbook, and start
singing. And I’ll
just start singing. It becomes
non-church, really, something
that connects people to
their homelands. I do believe
that my melodic sensibility
comes from growing up with
all this great Portuguese
folk church music. It’s
weird. It’s just a
melody and a lyric, but
you feel as though you’re
somewhere else when you
hear it."
Her desire to fashion what
she calls a post-folk record
informed Furtado’s
recent recording. "I
really wanted to make a
record that played on folk
themes but was very modern
at the same time,"
she says. "Folk is
universal; it exists in
every single country, every
nation, every language,
this idea of somebody picking
up a guitar and singing
about what’s around
him or her. It’s spontaneous,
real, down-to-earth, family-oriented.
We’re playing with
those themes, with taking
folk instruments from all
these different countries.
That’s why we’ve
included things like a banjo
and accordion, trying to
mix it up a bit."
"The goals of this
collection," Furtado
says, "crystallized
in her mind when she was
on vacation last year, spending
time in The Azores, the
Portuguese island group
in the mid-Atlantic where
her family originates.
I was visiting a grandparent
of a friend of mine, an
elderly woman," she
recalls. "I was at
her house, and she had all
the beautiful old antique
photos laid out on her cement
terrace on the top of this
hill. So, all these old
photos were laid out on
this cement table; all her
things were outside the
house. And it started to
rain a bit, and she had
all her clothing hanging
on the clothesline. And
on top of this beautiful
hill, I could see the ocean
below, and the hills over
there. And in the distance,
I heard a young person drive
by with their booming system
cranking techno music."
For Nelly Furtado, it all
makes happy/sad, folky/hip-hoppy,
weird/logical, hopeful kind
of sense. "I would
love to be described as
a girl sitting on the porch,"
she says, "on a rocking
chair singing to the wind.
Kinda like a person on the
street walking around, seeing
what I see. I want to capture
the wisdom of what I’ve
learned from my ancestors,
from my grandparents and
all my heritage, going back
to the old country. I would
love to be seen as a woman,
as a girl cackling at the
world, but praying for it
at the same time."