Here's the second guest blog post by Carl Lee, following his earlier post on the Sheffield clank.
Fado – a traditional music with a modern future.
Like so many cultural expressions across and within nations and people, origin stories are often contested, and Fado, the mournful ballad music so intrinsically associated with traditional Portuguese culture, is no exception.
What is clear is that this was a music that grew out of working class communities around the docks of Lisbon, in the early 19th century. It was music of loss and regret, of homesickness on travels to the new world and nostalgia for better times. Up beat and optimistic it is not, with Fado drawn from the Latin word fatum widely translated as meaning fate.
Some suggest Fado’s roots are longer than the early 19th century with it coming to Portugal from its colonies, or from Andalucía’s Arabic tradition. Whatever its cloudy origin story Fado is now a central part of Portuguese culture, so much so that it has been awarded UNESCO intangible cultural heritage status - see January 15th post - and tourists to Portugal soak up its repackaged authenticity in bars and clubs across Portugal, not simply in Lisbon.
Unsurprisingly for a music that grew up in a working class culture, instrumentation in Fado is not extensive with the Portuguese 12 string pear-shaped guitar being prominent. This made Fado a music that required little in the way of resources to deliver and its popularity moved out of the bars of Alfama, the port district with its narrows streets clustered around Lisbon cathedral up the hill to the more bourgeois neighbourhood of Barrio Alto and its more bohemian sensibilities.
Throughout the 20th century Fado was becoming music not just of the working class but also of the growing middle classes and even aristocracy. It then broke out of Portugal in the 1940s with the international recognition of Amália Rodrigues, sometimes know as ‘the queen of Fado’.
Rodrigues grew up living in poverty in the docks area of Lisbon but through her voice, honed in the Fado bars of her city, she became a worldwide star, with acting credits, performances across the world and with Portugal’s leading poets vying to write lyrics for her to sing. Rodrigues' most famous song was internationally know as ‘April in Portugal’ which referenced the central Portuguese university town of Coimbra where a separate tradition of Fado was developed by students, more formal with less poignant longing but a retained sense of nostalgia for past better times.
'April in Portugal'
When Amália Rodrigues died aged 79 in 1999 3 days of national mourning was declared in Portugal.
Although so much Fado today is performed in tourist venues, with a side helping of traditional Portuguese cuisine, it remains central to Portuguese national identity and younger artists such as Carminho have become stars of the genre albeit a genre that now draws in other influences such as pop and jazz.
What may take Fado to a new global audience is the Spanish singer Rosalia whose critically acclaimed 2025 album ‘Lux’ includes a Carminho fado song ‘Memoria’ which Rosalia sings in Portuguese. The lush production and classical music framework of Lux has been much admired with lavish praise coming even from the Vatican whose spokesperson acknowledged the album’s themes of religion, enlightenment and spirituality.
Rosalia - 'Memoria'
Memoria is the penultimate track on an album that is sung in 13 different languages from Japanese to Arabic. It is a Fado that dwells on how much we change over time and whether we remain ‘true’ to whom we were, or are.
“Siempre que me acuerdo de aigo.
Siempre lo recuerdo un poco diferente”
When I remember the past it always changes a bit.
Sources
History of Fado
Carl Lee is retired but was a lecturer at The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University, taught A level Geography for 20 years at Sheffield College, is the author of five books about geography and has a PhD in economic geography. He has been nuts about music since buying his first single in 1973: 10cc’s 'Rubber Bullets' if you were wondering.
More to come on Rosalia's Lux album in a future blog post.
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