Beautiful heartbreak in a bottle. The most sincere sound of sadness. ______________________
Perfect Sound Forever: "Fado" (from the Latin "fatum," destiny, what cannot be changed – "maktoub" in Arabic) is normally defined as the national music of Portugal. That is not correct: - although a very small country, Portuguese music varies dramatically from region to region. The origins of Fado are still not established, and, probably, will never be. Various theorists state that it came from North Africa, from Brazil and from Argentina, originally sung by slaves or immigrants as a way of expressing their loneliness, their longing for their loved ones, the impossibility of returning to their very own "Itaca." But let us leave that discussion for the historians of Fado. Amália Rodrigues put it in a very poetic way: "Fado came from the sea, the vast sea in front of us. Fado came from the lament for our sailors who departed and never returned."
Fado has always been an "inferior" type of music. Actually, there are probably not more than a dozen "root" Fados: all the rest is left to improvisation and to the interaction of the singer and the guitarists, and, very importantly, the response of the audience. Its composers and singers originated from the lower social classes, the ones excluded from the bourgeoisie, living on the fringes of society, such as thieves and prostitutes. Actually, nothing could be less respectable than being a Fado singer. Severa, the most famous "fadista" (fado singer) of her time (late seventeenth Century) was a prostitute. All this would change with the advent of the Amália Rodrigues phenomenon.
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