World Music at the Bowl With Two ‘Global Divas’

The energy level took awhile to crank up at the start of the World Festival 2001 series’ opening concert Sunday at the Hollywood Bowl.

Labeled “Global Divas,” the program began with a performance by Bebel Gilberto, a pleasant singer whose diva qualities are still in the process of emerging. Gilberto, whose impressive lineage includes her father, bossa nova legend Joa~o Gilberto, and her uncle, the great Brazilian singer-songwriter Chico Buarque, obviously has considerable potential. But on this night, she was out-sized by both the stage and the venue.

Working with a supportive quartet, she offered a lengthy program of mostly Brazilian material ranging across sambas and bossa novas. But her vocal style, still blossoming into originality, and her modest dance movements too often failed to compensate for the relative unfamiliarity of many of her songs. At this stage of her career, Gilberto’s diva-dom seems better suited to the intimacy of a small club than the far reaches of the Hollywood Bowl.

The evening kicked into high gear in the second half, with the arrival on stage of one of the globe’s certified world divas, Cesaria Evora. Accompanied by a musically colorful 14-piece ensemble, the Cape Verdean morna singer simply did what she has always done--dominate the stage with the sheer emotional impact of her rich, textured voice.

She included a few of her more familiar items, including “Sodade,” “Miss Perfumado” and the stunning “Angola.” Using varying instrumental timbres, her backing ranged from full-out use of horns, strings and rhythm to the intimacy of “Negue,” performed with only a solo guitar as backing.

What was it that made Evora’s performance so effective? Her whiskey- and cigarette-tinged voice, of course, but beyond that the sense of presence that may be the single most defining quality of divas of every style. Evora is a small, round woman who turns 60 in August. She offered no dance movements and she spoke to the audience only to introduce the musicians in her ensemble, but like all divas she was the constant center of attention, no matter what she did.

Her songs were offered in Portuguese, the Cape Verdean dialect of kriolu and (in the case of the encore number, “Besame Mucho”) in Spanish. But language in her case became irrelevant. Because the combination of her own defining qualities with the passionate sense of longing (comparable to Brazilian saudade) implicit in the Cape Verdean mornas was irresistible, a musical and emotional force that transcended the specificity of words.

So call it an evening of two divas; one global, the other still looking for territory to claim. A promising start to a world music season.