Penumbra

While there are many excellent albums by Portuguese singer-songwriter Luís Cília, Penumbra might well be his best. Cília cuts a curious figure within Portuguese popular song. Born in Angola in 1943, he moved to Portugal in 1959, studying both classical guitar and composition, and writing poetry under the inspiration of Daniel Filipe. His turn to song took a political cast, and his critiques of cultural and colonial aggressions had him exiled to France in the sixties, with one of his songs, “Avante Camarada,” adopted by the Portuguese Communist Party. But Penumbra dates from later in his career – the late eighties – where he’d developed into both a songwriter of poise and a composer of romantic sensibility. The material on Penumbra sets the poetry of David Mourǎo-Ferreira to music, oscillating between lambent songs of melancholy, plucked out on guitar and notably ‘of their time’ keyboards – the bell-like early MIDI tones are the tell – or, more beautifully still, piano and sweeping strings. Cília sighs, pensively, across the whole affair.