Sapore di Calabria, located just a few doors away from Msida church, started off as a small restaurant. It has now expanded with more rooms and into a garden restaurant as well, which is where Miriam Christine and I decide to sit.
A lot has happened in this young woman’s life over the last year. She travelled to Brazil where she was re-united with her natural mother and numerous half-siblings. She married Mark Warner, a film and TV director, and has been very busy recording her new album.
Like most singers, she has her ‘day job’. At the moment she works as a TV producer for Education 22. Despite having graduated as a teacher, during her teaching practice she realised that the constant talking in the classroom was harming her voice, so she had to change her plans.
Singing has always affected the direction her life has taken. She won the Song for Europe at 17 while she was still at Sixth Form (she is still the youngest singer to have ever won it). That meant postponing her ‘A’ levels.
“I actually wanted to choose law, but my career guidance counsellor told me I wouldn’t last a week with my singing commitments. I was going to take theatre studies but I was told I wouldn’t find work, then I was going to choose Communications, but they said it was already a big group. Of course, the B.Ed. course ended up being an even bigger group!” she adds wryly.
She admits that the only thing she was ever really sure about was her music.
Starting out in children’s song festivals at the age of six (while also learning to play the piano) she participated regularly in the ‘festival circuit’ until her big win at the Song for Europe in ‘96.
“Now I don’t particularly agree that children should be involved in that element of competition, but it was a good experience at the same time. I never felt stage fright and it gave me a lot of confidence.”
Were you always aware of your own potential?
“When I was young I used to win a lot of these festivals, and sometimes we even had problems to participate because the parents used to complain that I always won. In one competition, they even decided to give two first prizes! So I won first place, together with another girl, and when my mother enquired later she found I had won by some 26 points. I don’t think I was really that good or fantastic, but I was always very confident on stage.”
More confident than in real life?
“I’m still not that confident. If I have to ask something I always hold back a bit. My husband is always pushing me to complain if I’m not happy. I’m not like that, I always accept everything. I’m starting to change, but it’s not me, really. As a child I used to put all my confidence and energy in my singing; on stage I was untouchable, I could do whatever I wanted. People liked my singing, I was happy, so I guess I channelled all my focus on that. The judges used to say, ‘oh how I cute she is’, so I don’t think it was because I was particularly that good.”
As for the Eurovision experience, there have been the usual drawbacks. “Six years later
people were still expecting me to sing In a woman’s heart when I did shows! For that one week at the festival you are treated like a diva, but when you come back it is important to move on because you can easily end up stuck in a rut, and that is all people remember you for.”
While she appreciates the exposure which festivals gave her, like many singers, she came to a point where she had to change track. The new album has music written by Miriam Christine while the lyrics are by Mark.
“When we first met I played him a few of my songs and he asked me why I never did anything with them. I told him people won’t like them and they won’t make the festival finals. He told me ‘forget the festival!’ and he encouraged me to record them.”
They met through mutual friends and the attraction was immediate (“although neither of us would admit it”). She describes the development of their relationship as a journey.
“It’s very hard to find a partner when you’re in the music scene who is not possessive or jealous. Mark is very open-minded, very honest, he helps me a lot morally, he’s everything I’ve ever wanted. Since he travels a lot because of his work, whenever I need to go away it’s not a problem. We have a lot of fun together – it’s nice being married.”
Because of Mark’s work, the couple is planning to eventually spend more time in England (Mark is half Maltese half English), visiting Malta occasionally.
Miriam Christine has always known she was adopted; her mother had told her about it in the form of a story.
“I was always OK with it. I’m very grateful for what happened because I would have never stood in a chance if I had stayed in Brazil. My mother’s first husband died, then she met my dad and had me but they were never married. She had 11 children, another four had died, so I was number 16. My dad had another 11 children and they were trying to raise 22 children in one room. Then she tried to struggle on her own but it wasn’t working. She got a visit by an adoption agency, they asked her if she had any children for adoption and she thought that was the best way out. What was nice was that when we met the first thing she said was ‘she’s my daughter, I can see that she’s my daughter.’ My half-brothers and sisters all knew about me and they were crying as well, telling me they never wanted me to be adopted but that it was the only way. So it was nice that they never forgot me.”
The reunion not only helped her to learn about her background but it has also given her peace of mind; as if something that was ‘missing’ had been found.
“I did have mixed feelings, of course, but now I can understand the situation more,” she admits. “I was their half sister after all, I was the baby and so I was the ‘easiest’ one to be adopted. One thing which I’ve always regretted is that I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, and now I have loads! We do keep in touch but the problem is the language especially over the phone because if you’re face to face you manage somehow.”
Miriam Christine’s story is well-known because it was televised on Tista’ tkun int. The news that she was going to be flown to Brazil to be reunited with her natural mother was given to her on air.
How much of a shock was it for you to be surprised like that?
“Mark and I had already decided to go to Brazil for our honeymoon and the plan was to go to look for my family, so it was already on our minds. The programme was a shock because you never expect it to be you. I didn’t have any problem with my story being publicised, what I didn’t agree with is that the producers contacted my mother and not the other way round as they said on the programme. I only found out about this a few months ago, and if I had known I probably wouldn’t have agreed to it.”
Some people have criticised the fact that well-known personalities are given these free trips rather than ‘ordinary people’ who may not have the money.
“That’s why I was a bit annoyed when I learned the truth. I would have told them ‘use your resources for someone who needs it more than me because I’m going there any way!’. The public thinks that being a singer or a public figure is very glamorous, so I can understand their point of view. Unfortunately our lifestyle has nothing to do with that of Shakira or Kylie Minogue.”
Miriam Christine has this gentle self-mocking humour which reflects her down-to-earth personality.
She did visit Brazil again for her honeymoon because going back to her roots was an important step for her. For example, one thing she has accepted is her own curvy figure.
“They are naturally curvy, and they are so proud of it. Plus, I’ve never seen so many pregnant women in my life! They still wear hot pants, mini skirts and bikinis, they are so happy and so free. The people are amazing, they don’t have anything but you see them there relaxing, chatting away, drinking beer, with not even one worry on their minds. I wanted to buy some black sandals, and the guy at the shop told me ‘no don’t buy black, buy blue, blue is a happy colour because we are happy! Come on let’s samba!’ Whereas here, starting from myself, we grumble all the time, we are never happy! When I was there it was so liberating.”
Did you feel more ‘Brazilian’ when you went back there?
“It’s weird. I’m a football fanatic and when I see Malta play I get goose bumps when they play the Maltese anthem, I can’t help it. But in Brazil, you feel that you belong in a way. It’s probably because of my looks as well. The language was another strange thing. I was adopted when I was one year, one month, and my mother says that the first words I spoke were Portuguese. When I went back, it started coming back to me somehow! I was understanding nearly everything and speaking a bit. My husband noticed that when I was speaking English even my accent changed and I was speaking like they do in Brazil.”
In fact, you can hear it in the way she pronounces ‘Brazil’, lingering over the ‘il’.
Miriam Christine has always spoken highly of her adoptive parents whom she loves dearly – her mother especially fussed over her endlessly, dressing her up in pretty, frilly dresses with matching bows.
But her childhood wasn’t always rosy. As the first Brazilian child to ever be adopted in Malta, she stood out and was bullied at school because of her skin colour, her curly hair and the fact she was not Maltese.
“It’s one of the things I sing about in my new album Little Z. The title track speaks about my feelings as a little girl and how I overcame them. ‘Z’ is my husband’s nickname for me. It signifies the change in my style of music, the new me. I’ve become more assertive, I feel better about myself and my music because I’m finally doing what I want.”
She can now look back objectively at her childhood years.
“I was angry for a part of my life, but after all, I grew up in tiny Gozo where people didn’t really know about these issues. Today, people have changed, although we are not quite there yet. It made me stronger I guess, but it’s only now that I can feel comfortable enough to sing about it.”
For a long time, she tried to deny that she was ‘different’, subjecting her hair to hours of straightening and staying out of the sun so as not to go darker. Eventually she realised that she was being hypocritical: if she wanted others to accept her, she would first have to accept herself.
“I suppose I had a bit of inferiority complex because I wasn’t like the other kids. Thank God Mark has helped me a lot in this respect because he absolutely loves dark women! It is so important to have someone who loves you for the way you are.”
Our lunch arrives – Miriam had ordered the penne arrabbiata while I had the tuna salad. She eats sparingly as she is not a big eater.
Gozitans tend to be more independent because they are constrained to move to Malta for study and work. Understandably, Miriam Christine’s parents found it hard to accept her moving away.
“I wasn’t one of those students who used to commute every day, I’d only go home for the weekends so my Mum had to get used to it quite early. I could never understand how people were offered this great opportunity to start living on their own and yet still preferred to go to Gozo every day. I was very over-protected – perhaps that is one of the reasons I rebelled so much. We used to have quite a few fights. Over the years, however, I’ve realised that they’ve been really good parents.”
We talk a bit more about her music these days. I’ve always felt that Miriam Christine’s voice lends itself well to R ‘n’ B, but she explains that this genre is so generic, you cannot really pigeon-hole it.
“There’s R ‘n B gospel, hip-hop, soul, funk. With my producer we’ve come up with something which has a hint of soul funk in it, which I’m really happy with.”
We find that we share a love of the same singers: Alicia Keyes (“my idol!”), Macy Grey, Beyoncè (“such a diva!).
As for her own future she is quietly optimistic: “I don’t have a manager or an agent or anything. I have a few contacts abroad but it is very difficult. You have to know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows, and it’s still a one a million chance. But I didn’t want to be 40 years old, look back and say I never tried, especially with the music I love.”
At 25, she is still young, but as she points out, these days singers are ‘making it’ at 16 or 17.
“I really admire people like Ira Losco and Fabrizio Faniello who are really trying to make it,” she says with enthusiasm. “What we need is more people to have the guts to just pack up and go to England or the US. Still, it would be, very, very hard because there you will be competing with a million people trying to make it. Once you start listening to their stuff you realise how good they are and all they’re doing is busking in the London Underground. That’s one thing I sometimes feel angry with myself about because I don’t think I tried hard enough.”
She pauses and adds, “although mind you, at 18 I didn’t have the material to try and make it. All I had was the compilation album of my festival songs!”
What she is sure of is that her Song for Europe days are well and truly over.
“I’m not part of that scene any more and even if I had to submit any of my music now, it would never get into the finals,” she shrugs.
I wish she would submit something and prove everybody wrong.
“I think we should still take part, but only for a laugh like other countries do. We take it so seriously because we don’t have a big music market from which singers can make a living. If we did, we wouldn’t care about the result.”
I ask whether Gozitans make a fuss over her when she visits:
“Not really. In Gozo people are very reserved, I am met with much more enthusiasm in Malta. Of course, when I won the Song for Europe the people of Xaghra organised a big festa with the band playing outside my house, and the Gozo Bishop celebrating a Mass in my honour! But on the whole, Gozitans including myself, are quite low key. I think we do have a bit of an inferiority complex compared to the Maltese.”
Are there really two cultures as some say?
“Yes, since Gozo is so small, we tend to be more protective of each other and more wary. The older generation is very careful about their money; for example, they would invest in property rather than go on a cruise. There’s a truth in the saying that Gozitans like to hoard their savings (jerfghu taht il-maduma). However, it’s changing as more young people come to live in Malta although the change takes longer (ahna bid-delay). In fact, I’m really in favour of a bridge. Some people tell me that it would ruin the ‘adventure’ of crossing over to Gozo. Come on! What adventure?! When you go to places like Brazil or other massive countries, that’s an adventure but going from Malta to Gozo?” she asks with a disbelieving laugh.