The more I burrow down rabbit holes, the more I realize music has interesting ways of making (seemingly) strange bedfellows work best together. Case in point: Fania Miñaur’s all too brief career and this album, Deja Hablar Al Tiempo.
What is known about Fania Miñaur is that an early career as a vocal teacher and writer in her native Bilbao allowed her to come into contact and be taken under the wing of Spanish New Age and minimalist musician, Suso Saiz and the now, iconic, Grabaciones Accidentales record label. Seemingly under the influence of a league of pioneering singer-songwriters like Rickie Lee Jones, Joni Mitchell, Laura Nyro, and female-fronted bands from noted “ethereal” labels like 4AD, Fania’s own turn at forefront heralded a new kind of soulful, adult contemporary music that was both easily digestible, but askew enough, sophisticated enough, to appeal to more jaded listeners.
In Spanish music magazines, comparisons to musicians like Sinead O’Connor and Tracy Chapman weren’t quite off. Where critical review of Fania seemed off really came from their attempt to pigeonhole her music. As adult as this music was, it had a learned method to its niche.
When you turn on Fania’s 1987 debut, En Busca De La Tribu, you sense (holistically) that she, herself, self-critically, was trying to hash out where exactly to fit in. Featuring her first work with Suso Saiz and members of his Orquesta De Las Nubes, this mini-album swung effortlessly from complex quasi-jazz, quasi-artsy pop balladry, on songs like “Passion Gitana” to labored, mid tempo beauties like “Mal Tiempo Azul”. Tracks like “El Puñal”, hinted that radio play didn’t seem that distant, but repeated listens revealed more of that multi-layered thinking that Fania unquestionably wanted to traffic in — that, undoubtedly, kept her from reaching higher heights that would require some kind of compromise.
A year or so later Fania would go searching for a different record label for her music. Landing on another indie label, Nola!, one with a bit more freedom and budget to explore more personal music. Here, once again, Fania would turn to Suso and friends to augment her compositions.
Deja Hablar El Tiempo plays through as the introspective album it was meant to be. Songs like “Para Hoy” featuring beautiful atmospheric soundscapes by Suso Saiz give wide berth to Fania’s wistful voice, allowing you, the listener, to sink into the album’s burbling melancholia. Album highlight, “Te Saludo De Esta Tierra”, makes a three minute pop song brim with perfectly apt miniature drama befitting the glorious pointillistic turns the trio of Fania, Pedro Estevan, and Suso take to present a song full of profound longing, earning its triumphant/welcomed loving. “Por Eso Me Agarro A Ti” continues, inversing the idea, presenting profound closeness as a means to understand separation (of all kinds).
Percussionist Tino Di Geraldo makes his introduction known in tracks like the title cut, one that instantly reminds of the angular art pop of the golden era of the ‘80s. Even slight tracks that straddle the middle of the album like Fania’s cover of Carole King’s “You’ve Got A Friend” and “Que Sientes Por Mi” (which waste precious studio time by Javier Paixariño) can be forgiven as tokens for their time.
What sticks for you, or at least it does for me, are the tracks that follow like “Paso En Falso”, “It’s Now I Realize” and “Confusion En Mi Ventana”, all intriguing music flows that touch again on a fully grown version of multi-layer poetry and songcraft that Fania can easily master. “Paso En Falso” floats 20 meters above you, like the best Balearic tomes that find the depth of emotion in mood-setting “sunset” atmospheres. What this means for you: is Suso and Tino creating a shapeshifting modal music environment that spurs Fania to take inspiration from the vocal tiques of her native Bilbao. Far from a copy of anything else, here’s where Deja Hablar Al Tiempo appears to transcend time to proffer inspiration for our age.
Unfortunately, for us as the entirely too concise album closes out, we’re left to imagine just what else might have happened if Fania had been offered more opportunity to continue further down this path. “Confusión En Mi Ventana” leaves us reeling with more questions than answers. In the end, as Fania sings, it’s this silence that speaks volume to what we need to hold on to more passionately about. Letting the album close out with her just forming part of its final, twinkling atmosphere, somehow, Fania, sets us in the clouds, waiting for her return…on a clearer day, in a silent way she says…