New songs from an old soul – Ana Silvera Reviewed

by Hannah Masters-Waage on July 31, 2010

Ana Silvera must have an old soul. She sings her beautiful folksy songs with a wisdom beyond her years and with a confidence that would make anyone believe that her tales of biblical figures and kings from ancient times were her own experiences.

Swapping deftly between piano and a nylon stringed guitar, the 5’ 2¾” artist (the ¾ is very important, we are told) makes a big impression on the Firestation audience. Accompanied by a cello player, Ana’s two-set performance fills the room as we each fall under the spell of her music.

In her music there are hints of Rufus Wainwright’s story telling, Jacques Brel’s expression and Debussy’s lilting melodies. But Ana is also very much her own artists and one of the most striking traits is the way that she treats her listener like intellectuals, serving up complex and intricately constructed songs that we are left to interpret how we choose.

Ana paints images with her words. She doesn’t simply narrate her stories, but rather lets the tale form within the listeners mind. Her words are like a potion that seeps into the corners of your brain and carries you off to another world.

To say it is an enchanted world is not quite right. As magical as her music is, these are not pretty fairytales she is creating. There are stories of murderous biblical women with unmended broken hearts and peaceful thoughts of a man lying at the bottom of a river, content, finally, in death. Rather, these are honest songs, ones that look into the soul and lay it bare and this unabashed honesty is overwhelming.

One of her songs, Salome, tells the story of the biblical woman who called for the death of John the Baptist. In Ana’s rendition of the tale it is Salome’s unrequited love for John that leads her to order King Herod to kill him in return for one of her well-known seductive dances.

Salome’s anguish over the love that is never returned, when Ana sings of it, is so real you can feel it in your chest – ‘There is a man/he will not love me/like all the others long to/’. All at the same time it becomes the tale of a misunderstood woman who is finally redeemed and of each individual’s most painful heartbreak.

Throughout her set Ana’s voice is delicate and quavering yet powerful. And her perfect diction gives away the fact that she has been classically trained from childhood, which included singing with the English National Opera as a youngster.

In between songs Ana chats casually with the audience and we become privy to her not so great sense of geography. ‘Are we near the sea here?’ she asks and is answered by a room full or shaking heads. Asking if we at least have a river near by an audience member pipes up ‘Yes, the Thames’ to which Ana replies ‘oh… that one!’ She laughs to herself and shrugs, settling down to play her next heartbreaking song.

What she lacks in geographical knowledge, however, she makes up for ten fold in artistic genius.

Perhaps her classical background is what gives Ana her old soul, perhaps it is the meditation she does before her shows. Whatever the cause, the effect is clear: her music is mesmerising. It wraps you up in its embrace as it whispers ancient wisdom about life, love and death in your ear.