O Primeiro Canto

Biography

Dulce Pontes is a Portuguese musician, songwriter and singer who writes and performs in many music styles, including pop, folk, Fado and classical music. Her songs contributed to the 1990s revival of Portuguese urban folk music called fado. Blessed with a powerful and dramatic voice, she is one of the most famous and respected Portuguese artists. Pontes started her career as a mainstream pop artist, but over the years she has evolved to become a world music singer. She blends traditional fado w...

Dulce Pontes is a Portuguese musician, songwriter and singer who writes and performs in many music styles, including pop, folk, Fado and classical music. Her songs contributed to the 1990s revival of Portuguese urban folk music called fado. Blessed with a powerful and dramatic voice, she is one of the most famous and respected Portuguese artists.

Pontes started her career as a mainstream pop artist, but over the years she has evolved to become a world music singer. She blends traditional fado with contemporary styles and searches out new forms of musical expression. She introduced musical traditions of the Iberian Peninsula in her work, rediscovered many long forgotten popular tunes and found use for obsolete musical instruments. Her work is inspired and influenced not only by Iberian musical tradition, but also Arabic, African, Brazilian and Bulgarian sounds. She sings mostly in her native Portuguese, as well as Spanish, Galician, Mirandese, Italian, English, Arabic and Greek.

Dulce Pontes has collaborated with Cesária Évora, Caetano Veloso, Marisa Monte, Carlos Núñez, the Chieftains, Kepa Junkera, Eleftheria Arvanitaki, George Dalaras, Andrea Bocelli (O Mar e Tu, duet sung by Pontes in Portuguese and Bocelli in Neapolitan, for his 1999 album Sogno), and others. Her song "Canção do Mar" appeared on the soundtrack of Hollywood film Primal Fear. A 30-second piece of that same song serves as the theme to the NBC police drama Southland. Her album Focus is the fruit of a collaboration with Italian composer Ennio Morricone with whom she has also performed live.
In June 2006, Pontes prepared her double LP O Coração Tem Três Portas (The Heart Has Three Doors). It was recorded live without an audience in Convent of the Order of Christ in Tomar and St Mary Church in Óbidos. According to the artist, it is "her most personal and intimate album." It includes Portuguese folk music, mostly fado. "[1] It was released in December 2006.
In 2009, Pontes released Momentos, a double disc collection that includes songs from her 20 year career as well as several previously unreleased tracks.[2] Currently, she is working on an album of all new songs which is titled Nudez.

Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.