EVERY GENRE PROJECT - February 22 - Fado

Genre of the Day - Fado

Album of the Day - Com Que Voz by Amália Rodrigues (1970)

There’s not much to say in terms of article hookiness today. Today was sunny in Los Angeles, one of the first days in a while after a swamp of rain and gray; I was thankful that LA was finally leaning into the Mediterranean climate that made it so famous and attractive to suckers like me. It helped transport me in a sense to fado’s home of Portugal. It’s insane that we haven’t yet encountered a Portuguese-language genre. RateYourMusic is absolutely rife with Brazilian genres. The country is full of incredible musical diversity. 

By contrast, fado is Portugal’s main internationally-known genre, but one steeped in a long history. Although fado is traced in record to the 1820s, its precursors likely go way further back and have roots in traditions exported by Portuguese sailors to stops all over the maritime Portuguese empire from Indonesia to Cape Verde. Fado’s contemporary origins are a bit mysterious, but it could be some amalgamation of homegrown and Moorish influences from medieval times and perhaps some Brazilian influence. In Portugal, fado was the expression of dissatisfaction as well as joy by the urban working class in a Lisbon where they were marginalized from the wealth that Portugal was extracting from a wide and successful empire.

The genre is so beloved and important in Portuguese culture that it has its own museum and even a guitar built specifically for the genre. It’s understandable that it has held on for so long in a country where economic marginalization and struggle was a constant for a century and a half. After the collapse of its colonial empire, Portugal went through continual struggle until a corporatist regime took hold in 1933, resulting in a nation that faced the lowest literacy rate and GDP per capita in western Europe by the time it fell in 1974.

That’s a lot of contextualization, and maybe necessary—up to my readership really—but the focus should be on the genre. There’s a reason why Amália Rodrigues is one of the most famous fado singers. Her voice is undeniable and probably one of the best I’ve ever heard. It’s dark, rich, and commanding, yet counterintuitively still floats easily over the guitars. It’s capturing and potent when the songs are more plaintive, yet sails breezily like the trade winds when the melody is peppier. In fado’s tradition, she’s accompanied by only two guitars that cascade over one another yet still manage to interlock. In listening to fado, one feels that simplicity and a basic set of supplies is all that’s musically needed sometimes to capture the mood and spirit of a people, to effortlessly depict loss and fate and eternality.