Fado

Lisbon's city song, with twelve-string Portuguese guitar, a held-back voice and unplaceable longing

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Fado is Portugal's city song, where a twelve-string Portuguese guitar and a held-back voice turn longing into a public monologue.

Origins and era

Between the 1820s and 1840s this song appeared in Lisbon's Mouraria and Alfama districts, and the legendary Maria Severa carried it into aristocratic drawing rooms. It mixed the Portuguese modinha, the lundum brought back from Brazil and the songs of port sailors. At the end of the nineteenth century fado moved into theatres and revues, singers began working in fixed fado houses, and the guitar line-up settled. In the twentieth century theatre, radio and film made it a national sound, and Amália Rodrigues sang it abroad in the 1940s and 1950s. From the 1930s to the 1950s the Salazar regime censored lyrics and pushed fado toward a wholesome folk image.

What you hear

A Portuguese guitar plays arpeggios and ornaments, a classical guitar carries the harmony, and a bass guitar fills the bottom. The Portuguese guitar uses paired courses, twelve strings in all, tuned differently from a classical guitar, and its tone is brighter and sharper. The voice is usually in a minor key, phrases stretch, and vibrato and slides decorate the line at almost any tempo. Fado corrido is faster, fado canção slower, and the Coimbra student version is sung by men with more restraint. The words depend on phrasing and pauses, and singers often hold the last note before closing.

Key figures

Maria Severa is the early legend, Alfredo Marceneiro brought restraint and humour into recordings, Amália Rodrigues made fado an international language, Carlos do Carmo took it into concert halls, Camané brought a more restrained delivery back to small theatres in the 1990s, and Mariza and Ana Moura reconnected it to world music in the 2000s.

Lineage

Portuguese modinha, Brazilian lundum, Lisbon neighbourhood songs and guitar traditions feed in; world music, Portuguese diaspora communities and later fado revivals come out. It turned the experience of city streets into a repertoire for a single voice.

Common misunderstandings

Fado is not Spanish flamenco; instruments, modes and vocal delivery all differ. Nor is it all slow and tearful, since fado corrido can be fast and playful. Taking the Portuguese guitar for an ordinary classical guitar misses its twelve strings and its own tuning.

Sources

• Paul Vernon, A History of the Portuguese Fado（Ashgate, 1998），用于核对里斯本街区、Severa 与 20 世纪传播
• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Fado，用于交叉核对乐器与曲目类型

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.