While Renata Rosa was born in São Paulo, the state of Pernambouc has become one of her main sources of inspiration. As early as her teenage years, she would visit the villages found at the mouth of the river São Francisco, learning to sing the coco samba there, a song of requests and responses, and the toré, a sort of polyphony inspired by the Indians. Later on she learnt the rural maracatú, one of the traditions of the Pernambouc carnival and the cavalo-marinho for which she became one of the few women to play the rabeca, a rural violin. Renata Rosa has made her voice into a veritable instrument enriched by every contact with the traditions of the world. The Nordeste and its amazing folklore are the pretext for modern musical innovation in which the voice takes pride of place.

Clearly the voice is Renata Rosa’s preferred instrument, and female singing as a whole her particular passion. Her world is not limited to the Brazilian Nordeste and her enthusiasm embraces music from around the globe with a special penchant for Indian and Arabic singing. With no fixed abode, her only home is the music, a tent to which she invites both fleeting and long-standing encounters. Ranging from brincadeiras from the Nordeste (a Portuguese name given to traditions that involve both theatre and music and in which the spectator is above all actor. These include the cavalo-marinho, the coco samba, the rural maracatú etc.) to Hungarian or Pakistani songs, Renata Rosa never stops listening and singing. Her world, somewhere between the global and the local, is never the same, as any excuse is good for creating and re-creating.