To the world’s flamenco fans, de Lucia’s story is well-known. He was born Francisco Sanchez Gomez in 1947 and was exposed to the flamenco culture in his home of Andalusia, the cradle of Roma tradition in southern Spain. His father and two of his brothers were flamenco musicians and inspired him to take up the guitar at age 7. He played his first public performance at age 11 and made his first record when he was just 15.

What’s also well-known is that de Lucia was not Roma — which makes his early accomplishments all the more extraordinary.

In a 2004 interview he told me that, as a child, he didn’t know the difference. “I didn’t have a consciousness about Gypsy and non-Gypsy because my childhood life was very mixed,” he explained, speaking through a translator. “Later, when I was older, I understood the difference, but not as a child. I knew I wasn’t a Gypsy, but I was living in that same culture and philosophy and way of life since the day I was born.”

Traditional flamenco is a singer’s art; the guitarist is normally just an accompanist. In the late 1960s, de Lucia met a young Roma singer from Andalusia named Jose Monge Cruz, who called himself Camarón de la Isla. For almost a decade the two shook up the sometimes staid world of traditional flamenco by pushing the voice-and-guitar combination as far as it could go.

By this point, Francisco had become Paco and taken his mother’s maiden name for his performances. While he was still performing with Camarón de la Isla, he released his breakout recording as a soloist. The album, Entre Dos Aguas, hit the Spanish Top 20.

De Lucia’s use of jazz and other non-Roma influences in his music often raised the eyebrows of traditionalists. It also attracted the attention of jazz guitarists Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin, who invited him to form a trio that allowed de Lucia to indulge his jazz passions without traditionalists looking over his shoulder.

By then, de Lucia was a full-blown superstar, who went on to create a style that many say moved the music forward and influenced an entire generation of flamenco musicians.

“My flamenco is not a fusion,” he said in 2004. “I have always been careful that it doesn’t lose the essence and the roots and the tradition of what is flamenco. I have incorporated other things, but things that have not altered the philosophy of the music. I have as my only interest in all this to grow as a musician who plays flamenco, and not to bring things that some way or another change the identity of this music.”

Paco de Lucia created a place for himself in flamenco history that reached back to his earliest days in Andalusia, while always looking forward.

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There’s something a little ethereal about Mo. He’s dark-skinned, but — thanks to some striking contact lenses — blue-eyed, with hair that is both short and long and a big laugh that belies a life filled with tragedy.

Mo came to Norway with his mother at the age of 7 to escape the civil war in Somalia, a conflict that cost most of his family their lives.

“I don’t remember so much about it,” he says. “But I don’t want to go into that sad stuff.

Nor does Mo like to talk about Utøya, where, in 2011, he and hundreds of politically active young people were targets in the shooting rampage of a right-wing extremist named Anders Breivik. Mo escaped, but his best friend — whom he’d met in a refugee camp as a child — was among the 69 people murdered.

What Mo will say about the tragedy is that there’s one song that helped him get through it.

“Heal” was written for Mo before the shooting took place. It’s not that the song holds any secret cure for grief; it’s essentially about having patience. But that’s what worked.

“I really connected with the message behind the song, especially after all the things I went through over the years,” he says. “I took a break and I finally feel ready to move on and to just be me again.”

And for Mo, a lifelong performer, that means getting back on stage. Soon, he’ll compete against 14 other Norwegians for the chance to represent his country at Eurovision, that glittery tribute to song that, for a few days each year, seeks to unite Europe around a musical popularity contest.

Laila Samuelson, who wrote “Heal” for Mo, admits it’s not a typical Eurovision entry.

“I mean, the sound is darker, and also the beat is slower than the usual winning song of the whole thing,” she says.

And although some discourse will inevitably tie the song to Utøya, Samuelsen says that’s become something of a taboo subject in Norway these days.

“It’s not cool to bring up in any political discussion,” she says. “So it really kind of now feels like people are really afraid to talk about it.”

And starting a public discussion about Norway’s national tragedy was never the point. Mo says the song is meant to be much more universal.

“Everyone that lives in this world, they have gone through a thing or two,” Mo says. “And so when they listen to this song it could inspire them to just get right back there and don’t lose their strength, and just never give up.”

When it comes to Eurovision, it’s about the performance as much as the song — and that is likely to be a major point in Mo’s favor.

“My strength, being an artist, is that I’m real. And I just pour my heart out,” he says. He adds, “Mo style,” and that big laugh returns.

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

That rebellion stemmed from being the daughter of Brazilian pop legend Elis Regina, who died in 1982. “People would come up to me very emotionally and say ‘You have to sing,'” she remembers. “They made such a big deal out of it… and it always made me angry because it felt like they wanted me to fulfill a hole that they felt after my mom’s passing.”

Rita moved to the United States as a teenager, and ended up attending New York University. In a country where Elis Regina’s name isn’t quite as known as it is in Brazil, Rita learned to love her mother’s music. “It was easier,” she says. “There [weren’t] people coming up to me and talking about her, and crying because they miss her.”

But, as she learned to cope with the past, Rita started to realize that music was her future. “It was my soul and was my truth talking,” she says. After graduating, she started singing professionally in Brazil and released her first album, Maria Rita, in 2003.

As she rose to stardom, Rita was determined to become an artist in her own right. Despite numerous requests, she refused to cover her mother’s songs for nearly a decade. “I would be so, so upset whenever a TV show would put it as a condition, you know ‘You can only come here if you do your mom’s music,'” she recalls. “I’d be like ‘Well, so I won’t be going there, thank you very much.'”

By 2012, Rita was ready to pay tribute. She performed a handful of her mother’s songs before an ecstatic audience in Rio de Janeiro. That performance became Rita’s 2013 album, Redescobrir (“Rediscover”).

“It was such a wonderful thing,” Rita said, “to be up on stage as a daughter, and not solely as a singer, and see the reaction in people’s faces… It touches me just by talking about it.”

Interview Highlights

On her mother’s legacy

I didn’t listen to my mom as I was growing up because it was too painful, as it still is somewhat. I mean, you have to understand that this woman was not only the greatest singer ever in Brazil. She was also beautiful, smart, intelligent. She was really involved in all kinds of social and political issues. She was just a pioneer. She was ahead of her time. And, she would read a lot. She was just so mind-boggling.

And people were so in love with her — whoever from, you know, I’m talking about the audience, I’m talking about the people who worked with her. I’ve met up with a bunch of musicians who played for her, at one point or another, you know, early in the conversation or later in the conversation, they would just look at me and it’s like “You know, I have something to tell you.” And I was like “Okay, go ahead,” and they would say “I was completely in love with her!” I’ve heard that way too many times, because that’s the kind of woman that she was…She would light up the room.

On music as a language

The kind of music that I do, the kind of music that I like to present to people, is one which they can relate to. On a deeper level, you know? Don’t just shake your head and snap your fingers every now and again. … I find that it’s very seductive in a way, you know? To have someone listen to your music whether in Portuguese, or English, or in Spanish…and just be like ‘Oh, I’m so glad that someone gets me. I’m so glad that someone put that into music and put that into words.” Because oftentimes, we feel something. We don’t really understand what it is, we don’t really have the words to explain it, but it’s right there in the song.

On her mother’s death

Having lost my mom when I was four years old, I don’t really know what it’s like to have a mother. So I miss something that I don’t have, you see? So it’s this constant — I don’t search for her, that’s not the thing — but like, I feel like there’s this little hole in my heart, and it’s forever gonna be there. Because there’s nothing that I can do.So, I do therapy. I have no issues telling people that I’m in therapy. I’ve done therapy for the past 10 years. This whole pain, so to speak, I can deal with it now. So now it’s easier for me to watch her and to listen to her.

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