Portugal Embraces the Music of Allison Crowe

July 1st we celebrate Canada here – still we are part of the main, a global, cultural, community, and this week, Allison Crowe’s licensed her music for play in stores and market-places throughout continental Europe’s western-most country, the republic of Portugal. Her songs will be heard daily across the Algarve’s beautiful coast, the archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira, in the open air of Lisbon’s artful street galleries, riding the slopes and falls of the country’s lush interior, its mountainous northern region, mingling in the mystery and magic of coastal Alentejo. Up and down the Iberian Peninsula this sound we know and love will ring out.

Why Portugal? There’s a full palette of joys and emotions to be discovered in the art of Allison Crowe. In certain of her songs, too, there is ‘saudade’ – that quality described as “a bitter-sweet, existential yearning and hopefulness towards something over which one has no control”. The “unassailable determinism which compels the resigned yearning of saudade” is the soul of Portugal’s Fado music.

Here, now is Allison Crowe and Band with the sounds of “Silence”:

A Case of You's Blue Stroke of Genius

"Oh I am a lonely painter, I live in a box of paints" writes Joni Mitchell in "A Case of You" - a song reflecting on her relationship with fellow Canadian Leonard Cohen. Portugal's "reriz" is inspired to frame this cover, by yet another Canuck, with a dozen paintings of Kirk Hughey, Sante Fe, New Mexico artist now living in Paris, France.

In a palette rich with interpretations, as well as brilliant originals, here's another favourite from Allison Crowe. The original is on Joni's album "Blue". Allison's interpretation is on "This Little Bird"