Fado - "the soul of Portugal"

Wednesday night was Fado Night at one of our local restaurants, an opportunity to experience this much-loved traditional musical style. While Fado's origins are lost in the mists of time, it seems to have been reinvented for each generation of Portuguese, and there are plenty of young performers innovating around the genre along with those who preserve its traditions. 'Fado' translates as 'fate', an enduring theme in many of the songs. The mood of fado is 'saudade' which is not easily translated but means something like 'yearning' or 'beautiful sadness' or 'melancholy'. Typically, a solo singer (male or female) is accompanied by two musicians, playing the guitarra portuguesa (an istrument shaped like a lute) and the viola de fado, a six-string guitar. Fado is so important in Portuguese culture that when Amalia Rodrigues, its most famous exponent, died in 1999, the country declared three days of official mourning.

We started out with an excellent dinner in the garden of La Gondola restaurant in Lisbon. Lamps and candles illuminated the ancient grapevines and wisteria that arched overhead, and a bottle or two of local rose contributed pleasantly to the ambience. The two genial instrumentalists took their seats and began strumming away gently, amusing themselves in a kind of conversation between the guitarra and the bell-like tones of the viola de fado. I had expected a grand entrance by a portly prima donna in evening dress, but instead a handsome young chap in a sharp black suit strolled out, threw back his head, closed his eyes and let his clear tenor voice soar above the music. It was quite entrancing, even though we understood only a few words of the songs. Fado is all about emotion. At a table nearby, two elderly lovers sang along when he got to their favourite lines, also with closed eyes and hands on hearts. During a break I asked our waiter what the songs were about - "Love - how it doesn't work out," he said with a melancholy shrug.


Note: Sadly, I didn't take along a camera so I've tried to capture a sense of the performance in a slightly murky little sketch.