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.

Portugese Sonnets and English Fados

http://a-lingua-portuguesa.blogspot.com/

http://pedreira-do-nordeste.blogspot.com/

Portuguese Sonnets and English Fados



The ocean is eternal

Eternal is space

When at night the stars in the dark

Sparkle like magic dust

Throb like a living wall

A burning bush



Take off your sandals

And come travel the Milky Way

Along paths of the deep, dark space



Let’s there mesh our thoughts

And find the tiny seed

That gave rise to this our world

Our reality



Let’s find again the magic of the sacred tablets

The presence of the sacred one

Let’s, each one of us,

like Moses

communicate with God

Regain our bonded humanity



Portuguese sonnets

And English Fados

Sung by medieval Lusitanian bards

Minstrel singers of sweet-sorrowed songs

Magic ballads

Celtiberic dirges

Sad songs that sound like lullalies

That sound like funeral songs


Sung like one sips a sweet tasting Port wine

Strung to medieval English modeled Portuguese guitars





Listening to fados

The song of saudade

That Lusitanian, Portuguese landlocked

Seafaring urge,

Seafaring longing

From that land of Finis Terre

Where the land ends, the ocean and sky start

and one sings the Fado

As if dying and being born again


Silverio Gabriel de Melo


Morning Walk

Walking along a path that cuts the fields
going in direction of the woods
that cover the hills
I, absorbed in my own thoughts,
follow my dog,
who pulls me wherever
he feels like
tenaciously

There is a whole speaking silence
Spanning the scenery
That I absentmindedly
sever, going my way,
--a timeless, profound stillness
a muffled quietness
that echo some voice inside me
mirror my thoughts

Each plant, each tuft of grass
Each mound and creek
Each branch and twig
each self abandoned
selfless stone
is somehow an extension
of my own inner remote thinking
as I trudge my way
through this path early morning
half dreaming

Wooden stakes along the way
at regular intervals
give the landscape a certain touch
of order, with its fence of
barbed wire
on which birds balance
cheerfully chirping
ignoring my walking
my wondering
going

The rising sun, itself
seems perched on the telephone wires
a burning musical note
between two staves
that line up the distance
The world is imbibed in light
a light haze and fog hover over
the valley

Walking along a path that cuts the fields
going in direction of the woods
that cover the hills
I, absorbed in my own thoughts,
go by
immersed in contemplation


Silverio G. deMelo


A Poem

A Poem can set you free
Can give you wings
Can raise you to the light
Can make you see
Learn to hold on to a little poem, a little song
follow it wherever it takes you
in your dreams

A Poem has the quality of a prayer
That you gently recite
Say to yourself
Listen to a poem and what it sings
--A seed will in the dark
Obey the tree

Silverio DeMelo

Children

Inner space created them
from a surreal dream
invoked them from a depth
of life and time
which only life can claim

chiseled in the dark of a mother’s womb
the alien forms
slowly budded in the warmth of night
through some blueprint of sorts

Born, if not strangled in their dreams
by some living nightmare
soon they woke from their voyage
through the past
so small and bare

There, outside, look,
they learn and grow
from day tod ay
their eyes clear crystals
are like spaceships
probing their way

Photons
they glow
in many an aurora borealis
as children romp
as children frolic
as children play...and children
are here but life
bound for tomorrow

silverio gabriel de melo

Edel sei der Mensch
Hilfreich und gut!
Denn das allein
Unterscheidet ihn
Von allen Wesen,
Die wir kennen.
(Goethe)

Let Man be noble
Caring and kind
Gentle and just
Humane, intelligent

For that alone sets him apart
From wolf and dog
Men without heart
--from beast and boar

Let him be tolerant
Patient, no coward
Peaceful and giving
Caring and loving

Let Man be pure
For that his greatness
Correct, mature
Peaceful and gracious

Let Man be noble
Let Man be truthful
As his own Maker
Gentle and thoughtful

Let him reflect
The sun above
That him created
Is Life and Love

Let him be honest
Kind and wise
Humane and modest
Not prey to vice

We are a special creation
Stand we must above all else
Follow the light of inspiration
Poet every man, life a free verse

Silverio DeMelo