The TRAVELED path

Born in 88 in Porto, Portugal, Mariana Root grew up among her aunts, grandmother, mother and sisters, all of them singing and named Rute, which has been the origin to the artist's second name, Root.

The roots and richness of the ancient traditions through which she travels and that inspire her, the search to "co-create with the present moment"; these are the guidelines which bring about her sound, her art. And so they shape her music into a free, authentic, daring expression. Her main instrument and focus is the voice, which she explores since a very young age, and that has led her to perform in several countries, from Europe to South America. She gives voice to the infinite spectrum of emotions. She gives voice to what she sees, what she feels, what she desires. She gives voice a voice.

Mariana Root took a college degree in Jazz (Voice/singing focused) in 2012 by the University of Évora (Portugal), and has soon after that travelled through South/central America, exploring and learning different rituals, cerimonies and “oferendas” (offerings to the Earth) with indigenous people from the Amazonian Jungle, the Huni Kuin, Yawanawa, the marakames Huicholes from Mexico, Queru’s from the Andes, Koguis and Wymas from Serra Nevada in Colombia. All these people carry their traditional ancient chants, passed down from generation to generation, and that have greatly inspired the artist and showed her "a way of being" deeply connected with Nature. Mariana Root's great meeting with the Andean culture, with short visits to the Amazonian Jungle, has lasted for three years, and has greatly impacted her work and her voice. As an art vehicle, but also as a therapeutic tool.

It was eventually in Peru, in 2014, she came to record and release her first album, Solay. 

Back to Portugal, to her ancestral roots, it was in a place named Beiras she first connected with the musical traditions and melodies of the “adufeiras” (portuguese women drum players’) of Monsanto and Paúl. There she lived amongst them and got to learn the wonders of the Adufe, which is an instrument she has been playing ever since in her own peculiar exploratory way. She has fused her portuguese lineage of the drum, with rhythms and textures inspired by her past studies with the daf, a mediterranean frame drum, which was the artists’ first instrument. From this encounter with her roots, Mariana Root releases her second album Coração emRaíz in 2016, where she combines an ancient feeling with a message and an expression from the present, the now moment, the times in which we live.

Água was the latest work, launched in April 2019, in collaboration with the chilean musician Nacho Rodriguez. It is "a sound homage" to the great mystery that Water is. To remind us we are her keepers, and to inspire care and conscious towards all life on this planet. It is an universal album which calls on this spirit through several native languages, and which uses water itself as an instrument in its various shapes and sounds, from drop to ocean.

As an artist, Mariana Root has performed in theatres, churches, studios and outdoors. Each performance is unique, as it always brings this peculiar quality of improvisation and "present moment channeling", and so inviting the audience into a deeper state of being. Surrounded by different instruments in each concert, which can go from the strings of the roncoco of South America (typical string instrument) to the guitar and percussion, she creates a diverse universe full of sounds which go hand in hand with her voice.

From high vibrational singing words to sounds which know no language, from the depths of the earth to the chanting of the bird, Mariana Root is devoted to her art and to the art of sharing it.