Franca Masu, self-taught singer, was born in Alghero, Sardinia. She began to sing with a group of Sardinian jazz musicians in 1966. In her wide-ranging career, she has sung in a variety of genres, including jazz, folk songs with Mediterranean roots, fado, tango and her own songs. In 1998, she began to sing in Catalan, the language that, isolated for centuries, has been preserved in her home town of Barceloneta de Sardenya, Alghero. With producer Mark Harris, she published her first album, El Meu Viatge (2000), which was presented at the Mercat de Música Viva in Vic and won the award for the best debut album. The music magazine Enderrock described it as one of the best new releases and the critics recognised in Masu the true revelation of the new generation of Catalan singer-songwriters. In 2003, she published Alguímia, produced in collaboration with Mauro Palmas and Salvatore Maltan, achieving great public and critical success and participating in numerous international festivals. On the strength of this album, she won the Maria Carta Award.
The third album she released was Aquamare (2006), having written most of the songs herself. The same year she also released Almablava and in 2007 she made an album with the participation of various other musicians, devoted exclusively to the tango, entitled Hoy Como Ayer.
In recent times, her interest has focused on the recovery of images filmed in the old city of Alghero, the work of fishermen, the devotion of people in this Catalan town on the coast of Sardinia, to make a documentary: Plegarias, which has become a concert film, with music by Daniele di Bonaventura. In 2010, Franca Masu toured North America, performing at the most important jazz festivals in Canada, such as the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, to great public and critical acclaim. In 2011, she released the album, 10 anys, recorded live in different venues, where she performed songs from her albums in Catalan. Jazzthetik, the German magazine specialising in jazz and world music, defined her as “a feminine figure from the Mediterranean, maternal and seductive, decent and rebellious, tender and bitter, sentimental and bold”. In 2012, 10 anys was ranked 11th in World Music Charts Europe.
LiberPress Song Award 2014
Franca Masu received the LiberPress Song Award for her career in the music world. A rigorous, deep, diverse trajectory that goes back to the roots of popular culture: folk, jazz, fado and tango. For her seductive, sensitive, energetic and intimate songs, for the struggle to preserve the memory of her culture and her identity as a Sardinian and Catalan, and for her defence of freedom.