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Reportagem feita pelo New York Times no dia 29 de Agosto de 2004. Quem entende um pouco de inglês, vale a pena! O texto fala sobre como a MR começou a cantar, sua infância, adolescência, projetos e tal.

You Can Take the Girl Out of Brazil . . .

By LARRY ROHTER
Published: August 29, 2004

IN a certain sense, Maria Rita Mariano, the 26-year-old singer who has become the sweetheart of this music-obsessed country, can be described as an overnight sensation. She first sang professionally only in May 2002; her self-titled debut album, released less than a year ago, has sold an impressive 750,000 copies; and she has received four nominations for the Latin Grammy awards, the winners of which will be announced on Wednesday.

Yet many of Ms. Mariano's admirers would argue that her success was preordained: her mother is the late Elis Regina, whom many Brazilians regard as the country's greatest female singer of the last 50 years, and her father is César Camargo Mariano, a distinguished jazz and pop pianist, arranger and composer.

Whatever the reasons underlying her ascent, Maria Rita, as she is known professionally, is now the biggest phenomenon to hit Brazilian popular music in years. Both critics and public, weary of artists who insist on incorporating the worst excesses of American rock, funk and hip-hop into their music, have embraced her intimate but spare sound, essentially an acoustic piano trio backing a warm, sensual, jazz-inflected voice.

''Everything that has happened was completely unexpected, and came all of a sudden,'' she said in an interview at her manager's apartment here in Brazil's biggest city. ''We weren't trying to invent anything new, we just wanted to get a sound that was as pure, simple and direct as possible.''

Though comparing Maria Rita to Elis Regina has become something of a parlor game in Brazil, the irony is that Maria Rita never really knew her mother. She died of a drug overdose in 1981, when her daughter was not yet 4, and Maria Rita came to music via a long and meandering road, including eight years in the United States, that found her resisting for most of her life the destiny that others had decided would be hers.

''There was always a lot of pressure, from the time I was a girl of 8 or 10, from people saying that I had to sing, and it never was clear to me why I had this obligation,'' she said. ''I was still quite young, so without really understanding my mother's place and where I fit in relation to this mythical figure, every time they said to me that I had to sing, I took a step backward, away from all of that.''

When she sings in certain timbres, Maria Rita's voice is indeed similar to her mother's, and so is her onstage body language. But where the mother was a classic diva, so combative and temperamental that one of her nicknames was ''the Little Pepper Pot,'' the daughter seems more easygoing and level-headed, with a maturity, both as a person and a singer, beyond her years.

''Her voice has a lot of strength, but at the same time it is very sweet, and with a capacity to transmit emotion that I have encountered few times in my life,'' said Tom Capone, the producer of Maria Rita's first album. ''She came into the studio rather inexperienced, but she knew exactly what she wanted: something that was organic and informal, but with a certain class and beauty.''

Also unusual for someone being hailed as the savior of Brazilian popular music is Maria Rita's musical foundation. She is now diving into the songbooks and recordings of great Brazilian singers and composers of the past in an effort to re-encounter her roots. Initially her tastes and influences tended more toward American jazz-based singers like Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole (''especially the piano trio albums,'' she said) and Ella Fitzgerald.

''It's curious, but from childhood on, even before I moved to the United States, I heard more American music than Brazilian,'' she said. ''Even though I was living with my father and he was a composer and arranger, I listened more to Earth, Wind and Fire than Gilberto Gil.''

Primarily for the sake of his career, Mr. Mariano had moved to Chatham, N.J., in the 1990's, where he and his wife, Flavia, continue to live. Maria Rita, who did not speak English when she arrived, finished the local high school ahead of schedule and then enrolled at New York University. She graduated with a double major, in communications and Latin American studies.

In her teens, Maria Rita had thought of becoming a journalist or an entertainment lawyer. After college, she got to see the music business up close, through a job in the publicity department of Warner Brothers Records in New York. But she was still reluctant to perform.

''I have five children, and all of them began to mess around with music at a very early age, except Maria Rita,'' Mr. Mariano said in a telephone interview. ''I have a studio at home, and every now and then I'd say to her, 'Let's go into the studio and play around a bit.' But she'd always say, 'I don't want to, I'm embarrassed, I'm shy, I want to stay in the background.' ''

Looking back, Maria Rita said her years in the United States gave her more than just a broadened musical perspective. ''I was absolutely nobody there,'' she explained. ''Things didn't come to me, I had to battle for them.'' That would not have been the case had she remained in Brazil.

''It really was a culture shock, but it was great,'' she added, switching back and forth between Portuguese and an English that is now so flawless that executives at Warner Brothers have suggested she start recording in it. ''All the experiences that an immigrant could have, I had.''

After realizing that ''music was crucial to my existence,'' and that she was finally ''strong and independent enough to face the demands and explanations and not feel suffocated'' by her parents' musical legacy, Maria Rita returned to Brazil and within a short time had been invited to sing on a disc that Milton Nascimento was recording. There was a certain symmetry in that, since Elis Regina had launched Mr. Nascimento's career back in the late 1960's by adding several of his early compositions to her repertory. Mr. Nascimento's collaboration with Maria Rita, ''Tristesse,'' won a Latin Grammy award last year.

''I love hearing Maria Rita sing, because she has the assurance of someone who has been doing it for a long time,'' Mr. Nascimento said. ''It is as if she came to the craft perfectly formed, already knowing what to do with her voice and the arrangements.''

Mr. Nascimento also wrote ''Festa,'' the opening track on Maria Rita's record, especially for her and watched with delight when the disc took off. ''The whole country was nostalgic for Elis and so there was a lot of commotion with Maria Rita's record,'' he said. ''But she has shown that she has something that is very much her own, that she is very different from Elis.''

Just as her record was becoming a hit, Maria Rita learned that she was going to have a child. ''When I was first told I was pregnant, it was like, 'How am I going to have a child just when things are starting to take off?' '' she said. ''But I was born and raised in this business, and I came out fine, so I decided to go ahead and let everything happen at once. Who am I to question the caprices of life?'' She decided to proceed with her tour, but the Latin Grammys in Los Angeles -- which she will attend with her two-month-old son, Antonio -- will be her first public appearance since May.

She says she has missed ''the adrenaline of the stage and an audience'' and is itching to resume her career. She is to tour in Europe in November and in the United States next spring, and her father says she has already begun talking with him about her second album.

Having gained success on her own terms, she also seems to be learning to take the comparisons with her mother more in stride. Onstage, she jokes with the musicians accompanying her, dances barefoot and now feels confident enough to mention her mother in her between-song patter, always as respectfully and admiringly as the rest of Brazil might.

''My father is doing a remix and remastering of a record my mother did with Antonio Carlos Jobim, and when he played it for me, I was very impressed,'' she recalled. ''I said, 'How can people think I sing just the same, that I sound like that?' It's just not possible. I'm her daughter, so of course there are some similarities. But she's the top of the top, up there with Ella Fitzgerald, and here I am still in diapers.''