Maria de Fátima Palha de Figueiredo (born 9 August, 1956 in Belém, Brazil),… Read Full Bio ↴Maria de Fátima Palha de Figueiredo (born 9 August, 1956 in Belém, Brazil), best known as Fafá de Belém (Fafá of Belém), is a popular Brazilian MPB and fado singer, actress and active political activist, coming from a Portuguese family with indigenous and Afro-Brazilian elements and having Portuguese citizenship.

In 1976, Fafá released her first LP, Tamba-Tajá. Her singing seduced even the demolishing critic of Brazilian music from Jornal do Brasil, the feared José Ramos Tinhorão, who poured over her praises, pointing her out as a singer destined to figure in the first team of the current generation of great Brazilian interpreters. The following album, Água (1977) confirmed all predictions: it reached about 100 thousand copies sold.

Although she never thought of becoming a professional singer, since she was 9 years old, Fafá de Belém was an attraction at parties promoted by her family or at friends' houses. In spite of being a little girl, she interpreted as a grown-up "Ouça", a hit by Maysa, or "Eu e a Brisa", by Johnny Half. She was a girl who, like her generation, loved the Beatles, was a fan of Roberto Carlos and the Jovem Guarda group, but was also fascinated by jazz, classical music, and got emotional listening to the great radio singers, like Cauby Peixoto, Angela Maria, Núbia Lafayette and Orlando Silva, "People with a dagger in their chests", who she likes to use as models to interpret.

"Today I see myself as a singer of the great loves, of the losses and reunions. If the music doesn't give me goose bumps, I won't record it. If I am not a character in the lyrics, I cannot interpret. I am a dramatist, a passionate person.", she usually affirms, between pleasant laughs, but from the bottom of her heart, the great interpreter of Nuvem de Lágrimas, the first country song to be played on FM's in Rio de Janeiro.

The wide range of her musical background is reflected in the selection of her repertoire. She recorded everything, without prejudice. Regional music, popular song pearls, such as "Que Queres Tu de Mim", by Evaldo Gouveia and Jair Amorim, or "Você Vai Gostar (Casinha Branca)" by Elpídio dos Santos. Rock, boleros, Caribbean rhythms, guarânias, afoxé, lambadas, sambas-canções, compositions by the great names of MPB, marcha-rancho, sertanejo, and many other rhythms. Not to mention the polemic presentation that the Muse of "Diretas Já" (a past popular political movement that had as its objective the resumption of direct elections for the office of President of the Republic in Brazil, during the Brazilian military dictatorship) gave to the National Anthem, contested by the courts and applauded by the audience.

It was from her decision to turn the tables and let her heart speak louder that Fafá touched deep into the Brazilian soul. With the determination that characterizes her, the years on the road, a strong intuition and the absolute success of songs handpicked by the singer herself at certain moments in her life, like "Bilhete", by Ivan Lins and Victor Martins, that made her break the silence of a year in 1982. Or "Memórias", by Leonardo, popular composer from Pernambuco, responsible for the sale of half a million copies (Platinum Disc) of the album Atrevida (1986), Fafá reached, then, the peak of her career, especially as a romantic singer.

An amazing trajectory, but nothing that surprises those who know her well and her apparent contradictions. It was not for nothing that she interpreted, with such emotion and propriety, the verses of one of the biggest hits of her career, "Dentro de Mim Mora Um Anjo", by Suely Costa and Cacaso: "Who sees me singing like this, doesn't know anything about me...". This is one of the greatest truths about Fafá de Belém, who knows exactly what she wants and what she is capable of.

"I have always done my own thing, lived my own life, fought hard and punched a lot on a knife's blade to get to where I am. It is the people who teach the artist what he has to sing, and not the artist who has to teach the people what they have to listen to.", often repeats Fafá.

Fafá became a national brand. A national brand of joy, with that sincerely loud laugh that can lift the spirits of anyone. A national trademark of health, the beautiful Brazilian woman who even baptized the lanterns of the old VW Beetle, another popular passion. A national symbol of freedom, the symbol of a political movement that moved millions of Brazilians with her interpretation of the national anthem.

This is Fafá de Belém. Or even better: Fafá do Mundo (Fafá of the World).