Lisbon's Bel Canto

Lisbon's Bel Canto

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At just after midnight on a pleasant spring night, the roads of Alfama in Lisbon are pretty quiet. Barely anyone’s roaming about, and almost everything’s closed down. Save for a breeze that makes a little sound, the loudest noise is actually the sometimes hum of a fishing boat as it goes up the Tagus River.

It turns out that Alfama is actually one of the older neighborhoods in Lisbon, meaning it is a chaos of decaying, red-roofed buildings, plazas and even Moorish-type churches. Cobblestone streets snake their route from the river and all the way to Castelo de Sao Jorge’s fortifications, which is actually the centerpiece of this sweet city. Some pieces of it, if you will, were actually constructed by the Arabs as far back as the 9th century.

Alfama is also what fado calls its home. Fado is the miserable folk music that is as important to culture in Lisbon as the blues style of music is to Memphis, Tennessee. Fado is actually a mix of European, Gypsy, North African and Brazilian folk styles; it was born right out of the brothels and taverns of Alfama and also in the Mouraria and Bairro Alta neighborhoods.

Amalia Rodrigues was the most well-known fado singer in all of Portugal. A nationwide icon, she died back in 1999, and the whole country mourned her loss for days on end. Today, a newer generation of slightly younger singers, such as Camane and Misia, have reignited a resurgence of this type of music all across the country of Portugal and also acquired a whole new audience all over South America, Europe and even the U.S. Few performers have done fado more favors than someone named Mariza, the 29-year-old who seems to be more like a character right out of the Matrix line of films (thanks to her stage gowns and also her platinum-blond hair that is quite closely cropped) instead of a mere folk singer! Still, that has not stopped her last two albums (Fado Curvo and Fado en Mim) from selling some 300,000 copies all across the entire globe, which is actually not that typical for any other fado singer besides the aforementioned Rodrigues. Tonight, Mariza is more than excited to show off her town and also her music to me.

After a quick intro, she cautions me with the warning that we will have to stay up all the way until sunrise if I want to experience the apparently real fado. This kind of music is actually quite easy to discover in a city like Lisbon because many of the hotels in said city actually feature racks and racks of pamphlets that have info on fado river cruises, fado nightclubs and even fado houses. However, the greatest is actually performed in covered-up dives, hard-to-find eateries and even after-hours hangouts. Basically, as it is with so many things in life, you simply have to really comprehend where to go! It turns out, according to the husband of Mariza (who is also her manager), that the touristy places do sometimes feature some effective fado singers, yet none of them apparently really give it all that they have got!

It is routine for just acoustic guitars to back a fado singer, who then wails straightforward songs that encompass topics and themes such as envy, pain, loss and treason, all of which are actually subject matter that is intimately established in the Portuguese concept of something referred to as saudade. Saudade, it turns out, is essentially a yearning for something that turns out to be quite unattainable. This concept of saudade is actually quite deeply ingrained in both the culture and the art that one finds in Portugal; this is what makes the music of fado so powerful and at the same time fascinating. That’s not all though: This music really lives on and on in its ultimate form, thus making it hardly influenced by the strains of contemporary pop music. If you look hard enough, you can even discover fado still being done right, just as it was as long ago as 150 years earlier.

Driving right along the stone roads of the BMW of Mariza’s husband, we depart the tranquility of Alfama for Bairro Alto. Here is where a city becomes animated: bare erupt with techno beats, 20-somethings chug down alcohol and intelligent couples eat at so-called nouveau bistros. You can find a few historical fado clubs all over Bairro Alto. Two notable ones are A Severa and also Café Luso. Each of these locations features a recreation of the orthodox fado experience for the tourists.

We slowly make our way to Tasca do Chico, a beer hall. Many nights, this place is solely a wild bar. However, two times in the week, Chico becomes a place that hosts fado night, which features a 3-piece band that backs up singers who fearlessly step into the showroom to show off their stuff.

By 2:30 am, this club gets flooded with besotted, 20-something Lisboans. Luckily for us, the club’s bouncer identifies Mariza and therefore allows us inside and over the makeshift stage of the club. Here a middle-aged dude is wailing a fado song to the crowd! While Mariza really doesn’t wish to interrupt him, the singer stops and starts chatting her up, just like that.

During the next 2 hours that follow, we take in the songs of six singers. Their guitars offer up a densely created rhythm that feature succulent melodies that are assisted by plucking on the 12-string. Their singing may get quite intense, defined by both emotional outbursts and quieter singing. As the hours get later, the rowdier the crowd becomes. If the singer gets approved by the crowd, they cheer; if not, they loudly finish the singer’s lines for him or her.

The foundation of fado is quite tangled, yet lots of experts concur that it was first popular with seedy characters. Fado songs were usually sung in venues such as taverns and brothels, yet aristocrats began to discover these clubs in the 19th century. As a result, dictator Antonio Salazar, who controlled the country for nearly 40 years, attempted to regulate fado by imposing that its lyrics be dictated by his government. Later on, as the dictator came under growing criticism for his mistreatment of his colonies, he actually adopted fado as a way of diplomacy, even going so far as to send out Rodrigues on world tours to display his country’s national heritage.

Fado lost a lot of its support since it was associated with Salazar’s dictatorship for quite a while! By the 1990s, though, younger folks who didn’t remember Salazar’s dictatorship got into fado in a new way. Still, the resurgence was sort of fraudulent since not all of the new fado singers were really legitimate fado singers!

Some nights later, we drop by a small eatery. It’s a normal fado house from Portgual with bluish tile walls and wine bottles hanging off the ceiling. Here, the people are older and more conservative than the aforementioned hangouts.

Aunt Julia, this small eatery’s operator, gets up and starts singing. A woman in red stands up and starts singing with Julia and another gal in something called a desgerrada, which is a freestyle competition! When the competition closes, Julia motions to Mariza to start singing, which she does, causing the restaurant to quickly fall silent in adoration. Any patron who didn’t already make note of the singer’s presence knows she’s there now! After she finishes, the patrons erupt in applause, and Mariza goes back to her food.

Published in: Guide to Portugal