What Is Fado?

Fado
Fado -- which means fate in Portuguese -- is the characteristic folk-song of Portugal, combining haunting and mournful music with sentimental lyrics expressing longing and yearning.
Amalia Rodrigues was known in Portugal as the "Ambassador of Fado" for taking it out of Lisbon taverns and putting it on a world stage. The groups “Madre Deus” and the singer above carry on that tradition of Fado singing at its best after Amalia Rodrigues, the mother of the Fado.

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Fado is more than the Portuguese National Song. It is a song that compliments the way the Portuguese feel about life and the world. Its origins are manifold. Some believe that it developed out of the Lusitanian past, their Celtic heritage, when dirges, sad songs reflected the sentiment of a people whose sense of destiny or fate led them to want to transcend the Ocean or yearn for other realities beyond theirs, a sentimental brooding put to music. The word fado means "Fate." The Portuguese who dared the seven seas and know no frontiers, are given to brood over the ultimate of frontiers, death and destiny; the reason for one's fate; the longing for a world beyond their senses.

Besides its celtic origins, it had, as well, many other influences. Some say it must have been from the Moors. Others allude to the love songs and sentimental carping of the early court minstrels and troubadours; still others refer to the contacts of the Portuguese with other cultures, especially the African and the Brazilian. It is usually associated with the city of Lisbon and its taverns, the coming and going of sailors who stop when they are home to give vent to their longings. In the Universtity City of Coimbra, however, there is the more classic type of Fado.

All fados are sung to the "Portuguese guitar." All Portuguese know that the fado might have come form the "Modinha," a popular type of song that is the just right sentimental chant or tune that matches the way the Portuguese feel (especially after a little sip of wine). It went everywhere the Portuguese went, and back again, from the interior of Brazil, to Macao and Hawaii.

A lamentation, a wailing or mourning lullaby kind of rhythm, the Fado is filled with feelings of “Saudades, a Portuguese feeling that the Portuguese maintain has no translation , and only they can feel it. It is the Shakespearian “sweet sorrow,” the German Sehnsucht, the French “Ennui,” all in one. It is the feeling one gets when one thinks back on one’s life and one’s living and wishes to live it again, get back to it, or aspire some other idyllic reality, or unattainable goal. Saudades is the feeling you get when you leave a place and would like to stay or go back to it forever. It is what you feel when you say goodbye to someone or some place, or reminisce about the past.

In the Fado, “Saudades’ find expression, and many Portuguese will savor it like a delicacy or a port wine. They close their eyes when it is sung and prefer being in a quiet dark space to better listen to it. They will usually shout, “Silêncio, que se vai cantar o fado!”, or “Silence, Fado is going to be sung!” Then, they kind of sway as if to waves of a mysterious and mystical ocean beyond this time, and this reality, listening to the magic of this song.

The first most famous fado singer was Severa, a kind of Portuguese Carmen, a street or tavern singer that gave fado its Lisbon Fado quality. The great diva of this form of singing was, however, Amalia Rodrigues. She sang o Fado everywhere in the World and was much acclaimed in France and Japan, as well as the rest of Europe.


She died seven years ago and is the only woman to lie to rest at the National Pantheon - A beautiful monument, where rest in peace old Portuguese kings, and national heroes.