LUCIA DE CARVALHO

When on stage, Lúcia de Carvalho is a little woman with a strong temper! “A solar energy”, people say.  Stunning and radiant, she is, but still with a “je-ne-sais-quoi” that connects her to the Earth. Lúcia de Carvalho takes full advantage of her mixed heritage: Angola is her native country, Brazil inspired her musically and France is her adoptive country, with a more modern musical edge. Sometimes reminiscing upon childhood memories, sometimes a fierce woman always fighting for causes important to her, this singer, dancer and drum player offers us a music full of freedom and travels, audaciously mixing world music and modern rhythms. 

When asked where this love for music comes from, Lúcia acknowledges that it probably comes from her mother, herself a singer and piano player in a choir in Angola, who loved to gather her five daughters and share songs with them. “We used to sing and dance all the time! At home, in the street, at the market… Anytime and anyplace was a good time to let our emotions go! Moreover, we used to listen to music on the radio, Angolan music as much as music coming from other Portuguese speaking countries such as Cape Verde, Brazil and Portugal...”

After Angola, Lúcia de Carvalho spent part of her early years in a children’s home in Portugal and was then adopted by a French family. As a teenager she grew up with a new culture, a new language and a new country. Her career started when she was barely 16 years old, after she joined the band “Bia de Assis et Som Brasil”. She started as a dancer in the band and quickly became its lead singer. Lúcia spent 10 years touring with the band and playing a variety of traditional and popular songs to French and international audiences. In 2008, she decided to embark on a solo career and write her own songs. The release of her first EP, Ao descubrir o mundo, three years later, revealed an all-encompassing passion for rhythm, a love of Brazilian sounds, and a desire to give her heritage a chance to reach out and travel by clothing it in rock and reggae flavours.

Then, with a demo for a new album in their pocket, they set off together on a long journey, both musical and initiatory, that took them to Brazil and Angola. There they encountered wonderful musicians who contributed to the album. But, above all, they visited Lúcia’s mother, whom she had finally managed to track down. Kuzola (‘Love’ in the Kimbundu language of Angola), was the title of the album that was released in 2016, and of a moving documentary that retraced Lúcia’s quest for her roots and offered some answers to her questions about her own identity: “All those journeys to retrace my story enabled me to create a picture of who I was: the roots are Angola, the branch is Portugal, and the flower at the end of it is Brazil. And France is the ground in which that flower was given a chance to grow.”  If Kuzola was a quest for meaning, the quest this time is for the essence. “Neither Angolan, nor Brazilian, nor French, I realised I was more than all that…There’s something deeper that defines me, an immutable essence that carries me and makes me feel intensely alive. Once all the ‘you’re black, you’re white, from Alsace, this and that…’ is put to one side, what remains? Well…this remains!”

In this time of constant questioning and identity malaise, Lúcia’s joyful and positive experience is worth contemplating. It has enabled her, always in partnership with Edouard Heilbronn, to strike out into new territory on this her third album, recorded and mixed by Jean Lamoot (Mano Negra, Noir Désir, Alain Bashung, Dominique A, Souad Massi) at Studio Ferber in Paris. Of course, Africa and Brazil are still there on Pwanga, forming the heart of Lúcia as she lives and writes to the beat of the drum, finding words, melodies and rhythms on the same impulse; a raw diamond that her accomplice polishes, enriching the harmonies and sonic imagery and turning the songs on the album into travel films.

“Pwanga ni Puy?” “Light or Darkness?”

Pwanga! (‘Light’) is the title of Lúcia de Carvalho’s new album (release date 14. January 2022). It allies gentleness to power, meaning to essence, the light to the deep roots of a tree born in Africa, whose branches embrace the world, whose flowers appear as songs. It took a while her to realise, but her own name proclaims her vocation and has done right from the very beginning. Lúcia, ‘light’, of Carvalho, ‘the oak’ in Portuguese: the strength of the tree. A revelation that aptly sums up her poetic and human quest: “to root the light.”