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The origins of Furtado’s work ethic and down-to-earth disposition, then, are clear; the font of her artistic leanings is perhaps more elusive. "It may sound strange," she says, "but I think my creativity has always been connected to the outdoors, to when I was a kid and I’d go outside and sing." She elaborates: "My parents are from the Azores, a Portuguese island group in the mid-Atlantic. They have farmland there, about 50 acres, with cows and everything. It’s very beautiful. I think that’s why my parents moved to Vancouver Island [where Victoria is located], which is also beautiful and similar in other ways as well."
"My earliest memory is of camping, and then being in a boat," she reminisces. "I was always on my bike, always in the creek. My friends and I would build forts and play all day. Growing up surrounded by that kind of beauty has a lot to do with how a person feels - it just makes you a certain way." Apparently, it made Furtado creative, and that creativity found its natural outlet in song.
Furtado’s mother, who sang in church, was an early inducement in this direction. "I remember hiding behind the couch and listening to my mother and some other ladies from the church practicing for big festivals like Portugal Day. When I was four years old, I sang a duet with my mother for about 300 people. Even at that age, I knew I loved performing," Furtado reveals.
Secular music also made its presence known at home. "We had a pretty dope stereo in the living room when I was growing up," she says, "but there was this other record player in my parents’ bedroom. I’d go in there and sit by myself and listen to that Billy Joel album Glass Houses over and over. The thing that intrigued me the most was the sound of breaking glass on the record. I vaguely remember trying to sample it onto a tape recorder. Unfortunately, I tripped over that record player one day and broke it - the speaker fell off."
The sound of breaking glass was a bit of an omen as Nelly grew into adolescence. "I was hanging out with the naughty circle in school," she confides. "These kids’ parents let them stay out all night and sleep over wherever they wanted to. I wasn’t allowed to do those things, but I’d break my curfew all the time and get in trouble. Then I went through my little girl-gang thing; we called ourselves the Portuguese Mafia. We’d crash parties, and if someone pissed us off we would go back and let them know it. But the worst thing we ever did was throw rocks at the windows of school buses parked in abandoned lots."
Those years were not all vandalism, however. Furtado also played trombone in her school’s marching, jazz and concert bands and recreated Janet Jackson’s video dance routines with friends who shared her love of urban pop. Hearing her discuss this music with obvious knowledge and passion, one might think she grew up in big-city America. But her community had an even more diverse makeup. "I bonded with other first-generation Canadians," she illuminates. "Their parents were from all over - China, India, Africa, Latin America. I experienced many different cultures, which enriched my musical knowledge."
This enrichment in turn spurred her evolution as an artist. "Not long ago, I was just making music for music’s sake - I made music with anyone I could, every chance I got," she says. "But it was very self-involved; it was just for me. My first recording experience came when I was 16, when I sang backup vocals for my friend’s hip-hop group."
Furtado’s next creative milestone came the following year, when she moved cross-country. "After high-school, I went to Toronto," she narrates. "I got a job at an alarm company and started working my way into the music scene. I was part of an experimental trip-hop duo called Nelstar. It was me writing melodies and a hip-hop-style producer coming up with the beats. We made lots of tracks and even filmed a video."
Despite this progress, Furtado recognized a key skill she had yet to master: "At the time, I didn’t feel ready to take the next step with my music, which would have been recording and getting a complete release out," she says. "I was writing solid melodies and coming up with arrangements, but it really bugged me that I couldn’t write proper songs with a guitar - I knew that was the final frontier."
"Actually," Furtado continues, "I always had this goal to learn guitar. I played ukulele at school, so I knew those four strings - two more couldn’t be that much harder, right? And I already knew the strumming action. But it takes a while before you get your own identity on guitar; when you start, your songs sound pretty straight-up folk."
Still, playing this traditional instrument did not discourage Furtado’s interest in progressive music. "I’m attracted to the roots of anything fresh and cutting-edge," she confirms. Her enduring absorption of other artists’ work reflected this penchant. "I love Jeff Buckley," she says. "Grace - that changed my life. He totally influenced my singing and songwriting and performing, everything." She also began to soak up the music of international artists like Amalia Rodrigues and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Of course, all of this was brought to bear on Whoa Nelly, but it was the artists who traversed cultures that left the deepest impression on Furtado’s debut.
"I made this record because I was inspired by Cornershop’s When I Was Born For The Seventh Time," she states. "It was pop music, but it was a mixture of pop and Indian music, which I found totally exciting. [Beck’s] Odelay had a similar effect on me. It was super-creative, wonderful-sounding, full of integrity - and not melancholy. Sometimes it seemed that everything I liked was sad, so hearing that was very meaningful for me. Those two records made me realize I wanted to make a pop album, something with the edge of the Portuguese and Brazilian music I love, but also something happy. I liked the challenge of making heartfelt, emotional music that’s upbeat and hopeful - like Cornershop and Beck and Bob Marley have been able to do."
Furtado extends this philosophy to her live show. "I don’t want to be on the road every night dwelling on the negative stuff and getting depressed over it," she says. "I’ve gone to see some of my favorite bands, like Radiohead, and was, like, how can they do this every night? How can they torture themselves like this? That’s why Beck’s show was such a big deal. He made me feel like I can groove every night, like I can party onstage. Some of the music I write can put me in a difficult emotional space and I need to balance that. I want to spread the love; I don’t want people to cry after my show - unless they’re tears of joy."
Furtado is eager to put this commitment into practice. "I can’t wait to get on the road," she says. "That’s what I’ve been waiting to do my whole life, you know? It’s always been my dream to have my own band. I’ve always imagined siting on the bus, reading for hours until we get to the next city. That might seem weird to some people, but I’ve always been a nomad at heart; I love to wander."
Furtado’s focus on a future of such dreams-come-true does not prohibit her from living in the moment. She particularly savored her time in the studio. "I could feel how special that was the whole time we were doing it," she affirms. "I know I’m going to look back on it with very sentimental feelings. Toward the end, when we’d be sitting around sipping Coronas, I began to feel sad. I’d been making music with Gerald and Brian for a year and a half and it was almost over. It was a little like the end of high school - we needed some yearbooks to sign."
But Nelly understands that there are other musical avenues yet to explore. "I’m ready to move on," she says. "I want to grow and develop. I’m just gonna keep on writing and see where it takes me."
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