Anabela Duarte was part of W.C. Porno, a group led by Farinha, which participated in the 1st edition of the Só-Rock festival (Coimbra, 1981).
Still with Farinha, she was in Ocaso Épico appearing on the song “Intro” [Memories] from the compilation “Ao Vivo No Rock Rendez-Vous em 1984”. Her last concert with the group was in March 1985 at the A Barraca theater.
She participates in the song “Apartheid Hotel” by GNR, included in the album “Os Homens Não Se Querem Bonitos”. In July 1985 she performed with the group at Aula Magna and was almost the lead singer of GNR, in parallel with Rui Reininho.
She is invited to join Bye Bye Lolita Girl, a band formed by some of the members of the extinct Ezra Pound. She also briefly worked on the Moeda Noise project.
She joined Mler Ife Dada but the members of Bye Bye Lolita Girl reacted very badly to the idea of sharing their vocalist with another group. They demanded an exclusivity that seemed illogical to the singer as the band’s activity was not much. So she decided on Mler Ife Dada.
In 1986, Mler Ife Dada participated in the compilation “Divergências” and released the song “L’Amour va Bien Merci” as a single. In 1987 they released the album “As Things Que Fascinam” through Polygram.
Someone suggests that she record a fado album. Polygram accepts and is engraved “Lishbunah”. On this album she intended to make a fado that had never been sung or played, that was unprecedented.
In 1989 she released the album “Espírito Invisível” with Mler Ife Dada. Shortly afterwards the singer left the group.
She participates in several Duplex Longa concerts (in 1992 the album “Forças Ocultas” was released, which includes Anabela’s collaborations on the songs “Mar de Coral” and “Phado”). She sings and says poems by several Portuguese authors using a voice processor. She participates in the anniversary of the publisher Assírio & Alvim and performs at the Jardim Botânico, in Lisbon, on the occasion of the show “Nocturnos II”.
She collaborates with Pedro Ayres Magalhães in the show “Resistência As Primeiras Páginas (Canções Ilustradas)” presented, in May 1990, at the Lisbon Book Fair. Anabela appears to declaim while the voices are shared by Teresa Salgueiro and Filipa País.
In 1990 she participated in the album “Janelas Verdes” by Júlio Pereira. That year, she joined the choir of the Teatro Nacional de S. Carlos as a soprano.
In April 1991 she performed in four shows at the Instituto Franco-Português, in Lisbon. The concerts were recorded by RTP and the concert video, directed by Carlos Barradas, was awarded at Europália 91.
In May, a maxi-single was released (author’s edition with the support of IPJ) with the songs “Subtilmente”, “Asiaouasi” and “Ela Ela”.
Still in 1991, the album “Blue Turns to Grey” was released, by the Germans Das Pferd, where Anabela Duarte collaborates on the songs “Espelhos D’Água” and “Estranho”.
She leaves for Italy where she takes opera singing courses and participates in several concerts. She starts to divide her time between Lisbon and Florence.
“O Horizonte Basta/Of Horizon Enough”, published by Frenesi, in 1998, includes the recitation of poems by Hélder Moura Pereira and Paulo da Costa Domingos. This is a bilingual edition that includes a digital audio CD as an offer.
In 1999, AnAnAna released the album “Delito”, which recovered the songs recorded live in 1991, at the Instituto Franco Português. On this album, three songs by Mler Ife Dada appear, with new arrangements.
In 2001, Anabela Duarte, after a period of reflection in search of new sounds, chose the website estudio54.com to publicize her most recent works that her fans had been demanding for a long time. Thus began the countdown to «a kind of musical bullfighting, but with no blood in sight; in fact, the blood is of life and boils in each note».
In 2002 she performed and created music and sounds for the improvised theater play “O dia do desassossego”, by Fernando Pessoa, directed by Alberto Lopes and João Garcia Miguel.
The live debut of the Anabela Duarte Digital Quartet project took place in October 2002 at the SonicScope 02 Festival.
The album “Lishbunah” was reissued by Universal in 2003. The same label releases the compilation “Pequena Fábula” by Mler Ife Dada, which features a new version of “Zuvi Zeva Novi”, which marked his first meeting with Nuno Rebelo after the band’s departure. Mer Ife Dada.
He collaborates on the compilation “Uma Outra História”, promoted by Fnac stores as part of World Music Day, where he appears with a version of the song “Baby”, by Mutantes, which featured Mário Delgado, Alexandre Frazão and Zé Nabo.
“Blank Melodies” by Anabela Duarte Digital Duarte was published by Zounds in early 2005.
In 2007 she released “Machine Lyrique”, a concert album with possible and impossible songs by Kurt Weil and Boris Vian.
DISCOGRAPHY
Lishbunah (LP, Universal, 1988)
Subtly (Máxi, Sing Sing Records, 1991)
O Horizonte Basta (CD+book, Frenesi, 1998)
Crime (CD, Ananana, 1999)
Blank Melodies (CD, Zounds, 2005) [with Anabela Duarte Digital Quartet]
