“The last time I was here, I said I was going to come back to Montreal and speak French. But I still don’t speak it. But I ordered my supper in French!” Brazilian singer Bïa Ferreira proudly shares in English, as she begins her second concert in Montreal. And just as she did the first time, she divided her concert into two parts, one dealing with love and the other with activism.

“If you leave here different from when you arrived, then I’ll have done my job,” she adds. And it’s off to a prayer-like start, as whistling, voice and guitar mingle to deliver a beautiful sonic cocktail. Indeed, she may be alone on stage with her guitar, but at times it feels like there are five of them.

She also serves us Xote, a Brazilian musical rhythm often danced in pairs. “When I wrote this song, I was very much in love. But I was the only one in love,” she reveals. With her powerful voice and distinctive timbre, she masters her relationship with the microphone, knowing when to step away from it and when to approach it. With my friend Juliana, who’s just as much of a music lover as I am, we thought her music was a mix of blues, jazz, soul and gospel, all with a Brazilian flavour. Her signature is the whistle, which recurs in several songs and which she masters very well, as well as the many other noises she makes with her mouth, in addition to beatboxing. In fact, on one of her tracks, she adds a bit of Lionel Richie’s Easy Like a Sunday morning, which is a surprise but an instant crowd-pleaser.

“The last time I was here was in February and it was very cold. So I thought I’d come back in the summer. And here I am!” to applause from the audience.

On the track Saudade, you sometimes get the impression of hearing cajón and sometimes piano, whereas she does it all with her guitar. She then finishes with a bossa nova rhythm, which adds depth to the track. “It’s hard to translate Saudade. It’s not ‘I miss you’! It’s something else, it’s a feeling that makes you sick!”

Bïa Ferreira is also an excellent storyteller. She takes the time to explain all the songs, but even during certain tracks, she tells us stories, sometimes with a very rapid but always theatrical vocal delivery. This is notably the case on Molho Madeira, which will feature on Ellen Oléria’s forthcoming album, mixing passages where she talks and raps, waltzing between gentleness and aggression, banging on her guitar which serves as percussion.

“Every church has a choir. So to end this first part, I’ll need your help on the raggamuffin-tinged Levante a bandeira do amor (Raise the flag of love).

The second part, more committed and political, kicks off with an a capella rendition of Seu Jorge’s Zé do Caroço, a classic of Brazilian music.

After a tribute to Leci Brandão, the queen of samba, she kicks off the second half with a rhythmic reggae track, with a bit of beatboxing, which sets the tone for what’s to come. She first pays tribute to women around the world in Não precisa ser Amélia, in which she screams at times, showing off her vocal cords in full action.
The high point of the evening, in my opinion, came with the song Diga não (or Say no!), in which she denounced silence in the face of the genocide raging in Palestine. “By remaining silent, you are choosing a side. Your silence helps the oppressors! The audience takes its role as choir very seriously, especially on the song A conta vai chegar (or the bill will arrive), alluding to the debts linked to colonization.

She ended on a high note with Sharamanayas, the principle of keeping what’s good for you, and getting rid of what’s bad. One thing’s for sure, Bïa Ferreira’s concert was good for the people who came to see her, even if I would have expected a fuller house, as on her first visit. Having just come out of the Festival Nuits d’Afrique, this event may well have slipped under the radar of many a fan of her music.

Photo Credit: Inaa