Fado

Fado is the urban song genre most closely identified with Portugal, and with Lisbon in particular. Born in the working-class quarters of the capital across the 19th century, it owes its name to the Latin fatum — “fate” — and makes of that idea of destiny, and of the feeling of saudade, its poetic substance. On 27 November 2011, UNESCO inscribed it on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, confirming it as one of the most recognisable cultural expressions of the Portuguese language.

The word and the feeling

The genre’s very name is a lesson in etymology. Fado [ˈfaðu] comes from Latin fatum, “that which has been spoken (by the gods),” hence “destiny, fate.” The one who sings it is the fadista; the one who surrenders to it lives under the sign of a word inseparable from Portuguese culture — saudade, from Latin solitate(m), “solitude,” which evolved into soidade and suidade before settling into its present form, perhaps under the influence of saúde (“health”).

Word	Pronunciation (EP)	Meaning
*fado*	[ˈfaðu]	from Latin *fatum*, 'fate'
*fadista*	[fɐˈðiʃtɐ]	one who sings fado
*saudade*	[sɐwˈðaðɨ]	a painful longing for something absent
*guitarra*	[ɡiˈtaʁɐ]	the Portuguese guitar, with 12 strings

More than a theme, saudade is the affective key of fado: a longing that scarcely tells apart what it has lost from what it never had. To sing fado is, in the idiom of the trade, to say a lyric — not merely to perform it.

Lisbon: from the quarters to the fado house

Fado emerges as a recognisable practice in the Lisbon of the first half of the 19th century, in the old working-class districts — Alfama, Mouraria, Bairro Alto, Madragoa. It is music of the tavern, the street and the courtyard, bound to a social world of sailors, fadistas, fishwives and the marginal. Its first great legendary figure is Maria Severa Onofriana (1820–1846), a fadista of the Mouraria whose affair with the Count of Vimioso and whose early death at 26 fixed the archetype of fado as a song of love and ruin. Tradition holds that the black shawl of the women fadistas is mourning for Severa.

From the spontaneous singing of the quarters — fado vadio, sung by amateurs in taverns and social clubs — the genre passed into the revue theatres and, above all from the 20th century, into the fado house (casa de fados), a professionalised space where one sings at table, in respectful silence, after the meal. There fado becomes a ritual: the lights are dimmed, silence is called for, and the voice rises above the strings.

The Portuguese guitar and the voice

Canonical fado rests on a small, fixed ensemble. A single solo voice — never a chorus — carries the melody, accompanied by the Portuguese guitar (guitarra portuguesa), a twelve-stringed instrument with a pear-shaped body and a crystalline, ornamental tone, and by the viola (the classical guitar, called viola in Portugal), which keeps the bass and the chords. A viola baixo (bass viola) often joins them. With its flourishes and countermelodies, the Portuguese guitar converses with the voice almost like a second performer, answering it in the pauses.

The musical structure is symmetrical and repetitive, in the service of the word: fado exists so that a lyric may be heard. Hence the importance of diction and of economy of gesture — the fadista sings with eyes closed, sober, without choreography.

Lisbon fado and Coimbra fado

Alongside the Lisbon fado, a distinct branch developed in the university world: the fado of Coimbra, set apart in voice, dress and setting.

	Lisbon fado	Coimbra fado
Origin	working-class quarters	academic, student milieu
Voices	men and women	traditionally men only
Dress	black shawl (women)	academic gown and cape
Setting	fado house, tavern	nocturnal serenade, in the open
Themes	love, jealousy, city life, fate	student longing, love, the city

In Coimbra, fado is sung standing, often as a serenade, and by convention one does not applaud: one coughs, as a sign of approval. These are parallel traditions, joined by the name and by the Portuguese guitar, yet each with its own sensibility.

Amália and fado in the world

No name is so bound up with the genre as that of Amália Rodrigues (1920–1999), the Queen of Fado. It was she who, from the 1950s onward, carried fado to the great international stages and raised its lyrics to the rank of poetry, singing verses by Camões, David Mourão-Ferreira, Pedro Homem de Mello and Alexandre O’Neill. Her death in 1999 was marked by three days of national mourning.

Internationalisation continued: Carlos do Carmo became, in 2014, the first Portuguese artist honoured with a Latin Grammy (a lifetime achievement award); and a new generation — Mariza, Camané, Ana Moura, Carminho, Gisela João — has renewed the repertoire without breaking with tradition, making fado a constant presence in concert halls the world over.

The lyric: poetry to be sung

Linguistically, fado is a precious reservoir of the Portuguese spoken in Lisbon: its diction, its forms of address, its emotional lexicon. The lyrics are written chiefly in quatrains (quadras) and ten-line stanzas, in seven-syllable lines, and cultivate a register ranging from the popular to the most refined lyricism. Many fados arise from setting learned poems to traditional melodies — the practice of singing a lyric to a given tune.

This tendency to define itself is typical of fado, which so often takes its own nature as its subject: what fado is, where it comes from, why it hurts.

Heritage and memory

The UNESCO inscription of 2011 recognised fado not as a museum piece but as a living practice, handed down informally in the quarters, in the fado houses and in the social clubs. In Lisbon, the Museu do Fado (in Alfama, opened in 1998) preserves and studies this heritage, while fado vadio goes on being sung at table, from one generation to the next — proof that the fate which gives the genre its name remains, itself, yet to be sung.