Portugal's Soulful Sound
Often compared to American blues, fado is gaining global appeal
- By Dina Modianot-Fox
- Smithsonian.com, June 01, 2007, Subscribe
She sweeps in with regal dignity, the very image of a diva, her sumptuous black dress gently caressing the stage floor, her short, light blond hair and slim figure making an arresting sight.
Mariza, the internationally known Portuguese singer, is at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., captivating yet another audience with the haunting sounds of fado—the music called the soul of Portugal and often compared to American blues. As her voice fills the hall—alternately whispering and shouting, rejoicing and lamenting—the wildly receptive audience confirms her rising reputation as the new queen of fado, and the genre's increasing world appeal.
The roots of fado, Portuguese for fate or destiny, are a mystery. But musicologists see it as an amalgam of cultures, especially African and Brazilian, stemming from Portugal's maritime and colonial past, combined with its oral poetry tradition and, possibly, some Berber-Arab influence from the long Moorish presence that spanned the 8th through the 13th centuries.
Given the history, Mariza seems uniquely suitable to perform it. Born in Mozambique while it was still a Portuguese colony, of an African mother and a Portuguese father, she grew up in Mouraria, the old Moorish district of Lisbon, and started singing fado in her parents' taverna when she was only five.
"I grew up surrounded by fado," she says. "It's more than music, it's my life. It's the way I can explain what I feel about my world, my city, my country, my generation and our future."
In the 19th century, fado became popular among the urban poor of Lisbon. It was sung in bars, back streets and brothels. "Fado was our newspaper," says Mariza, "because it came from sailors and working places, and people didn't know how to read."
Regarded as disreputable by the middle and upper classes, it became nationally known through a tragic love affair. Maria Severa, a 19th-century fado singer from the Lisbon district of Alfama, had a passionate liaison with a nobleman, Conde de Vimioso. The affair ended badly, with Severa dying at age 26, either from suicide or tuberculosis. But the scandal increased fado's appeal, leading to the publication of its first sheet music.
Fadistas, as fado singers are known, often wear a black shawl of mourning, as Severa did after her heartbreak. Her story epitomizes fado's connection with saudade, "a feeling of longing or nostalgia," says Manuel Pereira, cultural counselor of the Portuguese embassy in Washington, "that maybe you can't even define, to miss your home, people or a lost love—always with tragedy attached."
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Comments (1)
My wife and I will be traveling to Wash., D.C. on Saturday , June 21 for the day. We are interested in explring anything bthat has to do with Portuguese culture on our visit. Thank you for you response Buck Waters
Posted by WILLIAM WATERS on June 5,2008 | 06:59 AM