The pop star, who lives in Lisbon for two years, released June 14, a new album largely inspired by her experiences and meetings in Portugal.

 

 

Madonna moved to Lisbon in 2017. Initially, to allow David Banda, one of her four adopted children in Malawi, to join the Benfica Football Academy. Her routine as a mother running between school and soccer training in a city where she had no friends ended up « depressing her a bit, » confessed the 60-year-old singer at the MTV music channel. . Then, while frequenting the clients of the Tejo Bar, she discovered in Lisbon « a melting pot » of musical cultures, in what was once the capital of a colonial empire including, among others, Brazil, Angola and Mozambique.

«The inspiration for my new album was born here in Lisbon, at Tejo Bar», assured Madonna on her Instagram account. In this intimate bar overlooking a cobblestone square in the popular Alfama district, the atmosphere changes every night as improvisations by visiting musicians take place, in front of an audience of locals, tourists, students, writers, painters … Seduced by the miscegenation of local fado with the mornas of Cape Verde or the Brazilian bossa nova, the pop diva conceived an opus largely inspired by the nights of Lisbon and the artists she met in the capital Portugese. Entitled «Madame X», it will be released on June 14.

 

Nice meetings

«Offering a space that inspires artists like Madonna fills me with joy», says proudly Mira Fragoso, a former Brazilian actress co-owner of this small bar that has become an unlikely meeting place, like the one that occurred between the American star and a Brazilian pianist, Joao Ventura. «She was sitting in a corner that night,» he recalls. At the request of a friend, he went to the piano to play a piece of bossa nova on which he superimposed the Moonlight Sonata by Beethoven. «The next day, she called me to tell me that she loved and offered to accompany me on stage in New York …», tells AFP the musician, who is not returned.

Dino D’Santiago, a Cape Verdean singer who represents the mixed Lisbon he sings in Portuguese and Creole, guided Madonna through the winding alleyways of Alfama. « Here cultural diversity is not confined to ghettos, it is everywhere, » says the 36-year-old singer who says the Lusitanian capital is experiencing an exceptional artistic effervescence.

In a country that takes advantage of being fashionable to develop its tourism, Madonna is a « great business card », had judged on Radio Antena 1 in 2017 the Secretary of State for Tourism Ana Mendes Godinho, who does not hesitate not to use it to promote Portugal abroad.

 

Source : lessentiel.lu