Fatima Miranda

Writing back to say that I have acquired a CD of hers and she is INCREDIBLE and everyone in the world should hear her music. Like, seriously seriously.

From her website's bio:

Fátima Miranda was born in Salamanca and lives in Madrid. After completing her M.A. in Art History, she specialized in contemporary art, publishing two books in this field.

Since 1979 she is a founding member of the improvisation group Taller de Música Mundana and Flatus Vocis Trío, which is exclusively dedicated to phonetic poetry. She has recorded The paper opera with the former and Grosso Modo with the latter.

Between 1982 and 1989, she has directed the Music Library of the Complutense University of Madrid. In 1985 she received the National Award of Culture and Communication bestowed by the Ministry of Culture for her book La Fonoteca (The Sound Library).

Since 1983, she has been doing research on the voice and vocal music in traditional musics and this has propelled her to use the voice not only for singing and speaking but also as a wind and percussion instrument built into the body. All of the above constitutes the basis for her own integrated musical language.

In 1987-1988 she studied with the japanese singer Yumi Nara and she learnt mongol harmonic singing with Tran Quang Haï.

In 1987 she commenced studies of North Indian Classical Music in Dhrupad style with various members of the eminent Dagar family.

From 1983 to 1993 she studied bel canto with various professors in order to combine vocal techniques traditionnally considered incompatibles.

In 1996, she was awarded the prestigious DAAD grant, being invited by the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst, as artist in residence in the city of Berlin.

During the nineties she has created three concerts-performances for solo voice: Las Voces de la Voz (1991), Concierto en Canto (1995), ArteSonado (2000), each of them edited on CD. In 2005 she has created Cantos Robados, edited on DVD.

Fátima Miranda has collaborated among others with Llorenç Barber, Robert Ashley, Wolf Vostell, Jean-Claude Eloy, Julio Estrada, Bartolomé Ferrando, Pedro Elías, Stefano Scodanibbio, Bertl Mutter, Rachid Koraichi, John Rose, Hans Peter Kuhn, Stéphane Abboud, Werner Durand, Mirella Weingarten and Sacha Waltz.

She has performed as a soloist in numerous international festivals within contemporary, vocal and experimental music circuits as well as those of theatre, sound poetry and performance art.

She is often mentioned in a "if you like Diamanda Galas, you might like..." context. The two have similar interests and goals, perhaps, but their approaches are different and they sound absolutely nothing alike.

I don't think I'm a good enough music writer to describe the sound of her music. It has a very wide range and fits into no genre I can think of. Her voice does so many incredible things that half the time it sounds like very skillful electronic manipulation -- but it isn't. I have no idea how many octaves this woman's voice spans, but it's a hell of a lot.

"Percu Voz" sounds like twelve and a half minutes in the womb of a Martian. "El Principio del Fin" uses Spanish phonetics to create a rich percussive beat. "Canto Largo" is this gorgeously soaring soprano piece that reminds me of the calls loons make. Blah blah I could talk about this woman's talent for a long time, but it would kill the FUN that exists in her music too. It's seriously playful and joyous stuff.

dude dude dude. Check her out.

I can back you up here, you have the record Concierto en Canto and it is a beautiful, beautiful record. Recommended to me by Dina Emerson, liner notes by Henri Chopin to help you triangulate. Her style is absolutely unique, and like you say it's fun in a way that most extended technique people usually miss, it's bizarre without being pretentious, that record's 5 out of 5 and I wish I could find a copy of even one other record by her

This blog:

http://popsheep.com/archive/2007_04_01_popsheep_archive.html

has an April 18th 2007 post with a non-CeC song I hadn't heard before. I don't think it's as strong/beautiful as the other material I've heard of hers, but it still features that voice, which is of course a virtue.

I'd never heard of Dina Emerson. A quick search definitely piqued my interest, though; she sounds completely awesome! And a fellow Bay Arean to boot.

absolutely wonderful discovery, I'm amazed she's not better known outside spain and am struggling to find a lot of her stuff. one of the most powerful and versatile voices I've heard, so clean and with a ridiculous range. sometimes she very slowly & elegantly unfurls microtonal melodies over a drone, sometimes she sounds like a humpback whale. the way she layers her own vocals on tracks like desasosiego reminds me a little of katie gately but it's somehow both more understated & minimal, with a weight to it, and also more out-there with all sorts of extended technique, trilling, laughing and so on and a real taste for absurd fruity nonsense that gives it all a rich colour and sense of herself. particularly fond of diapasion and dhrupad dream. anyone else into her?