Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Fado
'I don't sing fado. It sings me.'
Amália Rodrigues
Portugal's most famous style of music, fado (Portuguese for 'fate'), couldn't really exist
without
saudade
. These melancholic songs are dripping with emotion - and revel in stories
of the painful twists and turns of fate, of unreachable distant lovers, fathomless yearning
for the homeland, and wondrous days that have come and gone. The emotional quality of
the singing plays just as an important role as technical skills, helping fado to reach across
linguistic boundaries. Listening to fado is perhaps the easiest way of understanding
saudade
, in all its evocative variety.
Although fado is something of a national treasure - in 2011 it was added to Unesco's list
of the World's Intangible Cultural Heritage - it's really the music of Lisbon. (In the uni-
versity town of Coimbra, fado exists in a different, slightly more cerebral form: it's exclus-
ively men, often students or alumni, who sing of love, bohemian life and the city itself.) No
one quite knows its origins, though African and Brazilian rhythms, Moorish chants and the
songs of Provençal troubadors may have influenced the sound. What is clear is that by the
19th century, fado could be heard all over the traditional working-class neighbourhoods of
Mouraria and the Alfama, usually in brothels and seedy taverns. It was the anthem of the
poor, and maintained an unsavoury reputation until the late 19th century when the upper
classes took an interest in the music and brought it into the mainstream.
Fado remained an obscure, mostly local experience until the 20th century, when it re-
ceived national and, later, international attention. One singer who played a major role in its
popularisation was Amália Rodrigues, the 'queen of fado', who became a household name
in the 1940s. Born to a poor family in 1920, Amália took the music from the tavern to the
concert hall and then into households via radio, and onto film screens (starring in the 1947
film
Capas Negras
). She had some of Portugal's best poets and writers of the day writing
songs for her. Yet, along the way, she had her share of ups and downs - depression, illness,
failed love affairs - and her heart-rending fado was more than an abstraction.
Amália enjoyed wide acclaim, although her reputation was sullied following the 1974 re-
volution - when she was criticised for tacitly supporting the Salazar regime (although there
is little evidence of that). Fado's popularity slid off the map in the post-revolution days
when the Portuguese were eager to make a clean break from the past. (Salazar spoke of
throwing the masses the three F's - fado, football and Fátima - to keep them happily occu-
pied.) The 1990s, however, saw a resurgence of fado's popularity, with the opening of new
