Fado music is a traditional form of urban folk music from Portugal. There are two main styles of fado: Lisboa Fado is traditionally performed by a female vocalist (called a fadista) with two or three male guitarists, and Coimbra Fado is generally performed by a male soloist, who both sings and plays guitar.
Fado Music Lyrics:
The Portuguese language has a word, saudade, which doesn't translate into English. It roughly means "nostalgia" or "homesickness", but implies a bittersweet longing. This word, and its adjoining concept, form the basis of the lyrical content of fado music. Songs are often about lost or unrequited love, death and general sadness.
The Origins of Fado Music:
Unlike rural folk musics, where a single culture is often responsible for the evolution of the genre, fado is an urban folk music, originating in the port city of Lisbon, where many cultures met and merged over centuries. Fado combines elements of Portuguese country folk music with Moorish and African influences, among others.
Amalia Rodrigues is the unchallenged queen of fado--the Portuguese equivalent of flamenco or blues--and one of the greatest singers on record. Her voice is rich and sinuous, with the soulful intensity of a Billie Holiday or Edith Piaf, but a warmth and sense of phrasing all her own. This retrospective ranges from her first recordings in 1952 up to 1970 and gives a superb picture of her work. The instrumentation is simple guitar and Portuguese mandolin, perfectly framing her aching laments and flowing melodies, like a gentler version of flamenco or a continental cousin of Cesaria Evora's morna. The songs include folk and popular material, but the emphasis is on the deep, passionate fado, and it doesn't get any better than this. --Elijah Wald
Situated on the north banks of the River Tagus, the charm of Lisbon exists in its strong links to the past. Its renovated palaces, magnificent churches and an impressive castle mirror the city's rich cultural heritage. Its eclectic blend of neighborhoods, culture and architecture distinguish this capital city uniquely from the other European capitals and make it a truly fascinating and comprehensive city to visit.
A city set on seven hills, as the legend tells, with its cobble-stoned pavements and narrow streets full of Art Nouveau cafés promises a lot to discover. Most popular spots in Lisbon are; located around Rossio and Praça do Comércio, Baixa; situated on the hill around St. George’s Castle, Alfama and Mouraria; and set on Tagus River, Belém.
Lisbon also hosts a great number of remarkable museums of ancient and modern art, some of which are Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, National Museum of Contemporary Art, National Coach Museum, Berardo Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and Carmo Archaeological Museum. But, Lisbon isn't all culture and history; Bairro Alto is the center of nightlife with various restaurants and bars where melancholic traditional Portuguese music, Fado, can also be listened.
When tired of sight-seeing, shopping in Lisbon will take all your tiredness away! The biggest shopping mall in Iberian Peninsula, Centro Commercial Colombo, will offer you innumerous options. For those who prefer to shop in local markets, there is a fascinating flea market at the Campo de Santa Clara.
The best way to discover Lisbon is to get lost in its narrow streets and up and down roads! Every narrow street will tell you a different story and every story will reach to your heart easily! http://www.lisbon-guide.info/
THERE lived once a boy whose father and mother were desirous that he should learn some trade. He had no wish to do so, but, as his parents insisted upon it, he undertook to learn the trade of a shoemaker. But as soon as the father died he desisted from work and gave up making shoes. The mother was very angry with him for this and turned him out of doors. The boy told his mother that he would be sure to return home a rich man some day, and that he meant to marry the first female he met on his way. He took a basket with all his shoemaker's tools and went away. He journeyed many leagues through some forest and overgrown places, and meeting with a large square stone on his way he sat upon it, took out a loaf' from his basket, and began to eat. From under the stone a large spider came out, and the boy had hardly seen her when he said to her, "You shall be my wife." The spider upon hearing this crawled inside the basket, but the boy made a hole in the loaf he carried and put her in it. He walked and he walked, and he sighted at a great distance an old house. He entered it, placed the basket on the floor, and the spider came out of it and went crawling up the walls until she reached the ceiling, and commenced to make a web. The boy turned towards her and looking up said, "That is the way I like to see women, fond of work." The spider made no answer. The boy then went seeking for work at a neighbouring village. As it happened that in that village there were no shoemakers he was welcomed among them, and they gave him plenty of work to do. As the youth found that he was making a fortune he engaged a servant-maid to attend upon his wife, and brought her to the old house where the spider had remained. He furnished the house and bought a little clay stove and some plates and dishes for the dinner. He then went out and left the servant with the spider. The maid remained much astonished, and wondered still more when the spider told her to open a certain door which led to the fowl-house and kill a chicken, and afterwards to open a cupboard where she would find everything necessary for cooking and for the general use of the house. When the youth returned home he found the house swept and a dinner prepared of the best and most delicious viands. Being very pleased, he turned round to the spider and said, "See what a good choice I have made in my wife!" The spider from the ceiling threw down all manner of embroidered stuffs which she had worked for beautifying her house: and after they had lived in this way a whole year, and the youth had already become very rich, and no longer required to work at his trade, for everything he required in the way of clothing and food and everything else necessary for life always made its appearance without his knowing how, he resolved to return to his mother's house as he had promised her he would do at the end of a year. He ordered two horses to be saddled and got ready, and said to his servant, "You shall now act as my wife, because I am going to tell my mother that I am married." The maid was delighted at this and mounted the horse prepared for her and went with the youth. The spider came down from the ceiling and went to the fowl-house where she only found a cock left. She got inside it, and thus went walking behind the two on horseback. On reaching the forest they entered it, and both sat on the same stone, from under which the spider had come out before. They were looking on the ground when they saw the cock and heard it crow:
"Ki kiri ki,
Ki kiri kioh!
Here is the king,
And I am the queen oh!"
At that moment the stone, broke open in two parts, and became transformed into a splendid palace. The spider was turned into a beautiful princess and married the youth, who became king and she a queen. They then sent for the mother; while the servant-maid continued with them as lady in waiting.
The text came from:
Pedroso, Consiglieri. Portuguese Folk-Tales. Folk Lore Society Publications, Vol. 9. Miss Henrietta Monteiro, translator. New York: Folk Lore Society Publications, 1882.
[Reprinted: New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1969.]Amazon.com:Buy the book inpaperback.
You need:
1 Kg Portuguese Style salt cod – soak over night (if on the bone, make sure to remove them all after soaking)
Ground black pepper
2 tablespoon of smoked paprika
2 cans of tomatoes
400 gms of Kalamatta olives (traditionally green olives are used)
8 cloves of garlic (crushed and chopped)
2 large onions (chopped)
6 large potatoes – peeled and cut into large chunks (Royal Blues would be perfect)
4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil Method:
Drain the soaked cod thoroughly, cut into pieces and place into the camp oven about half way up the chain. Cover with water and boil gently for about ½ an hour. Remove the fish leaving it to cool but reserve the water. Boil the potatoes in the water for about 10 minutes – remove them from the heat whilst still warm. In a pan, sauté the onions and garlic in the olive oil then add the fish pieces and paprika, season with salt and pepper. Fry for about five minutes then add to the potatoes in the camp oven and return it to the heat. Stir in the tomatoes and olives and simmer form about 25 minutes. Serving Suggestion: Serve with saffron rice. http://www.abc.net.au/coodabeens/stories/s2122758.htm
Written over the author's signature and translated into English by Fernando Rodrigues and Tim Crosfield
I was born in a family of landless peasants, in Azinhaga, a small village in the province of Ribatejo, on the right bank of the Almonda River, around a hundred kilometres north-east of Lisbon. My parents were José de Sousa and Maria da Piedade. José de Sousa would have been my own name had not the Registrar, on his own inititiave added the nickname by which my father's family was known in the village: Saramago. I should add that saramago is a wild herbaceous plant, whose leaves in those times served at need as nourishment for the poor. Not until the age of seven, when I had to present an identification document at primary school, was it realised that my full name was José de Sousa Saramago...
This was not, however, the only identity problem to which I was fated at birth. Though I had come into the world on 16 November 1922, my official documents show that I was born two days later, on the 18th. It was thanks to this petty fraud that my family escaped from paying the fine for not having registered my birth at the proper legal time.
Maybe because he had served in World War I, in France as an artillery soldier, and had known other surroundings from those of the village, my father decided in 1924 to leave farm work and move with his family to Lisbon, where he started as a policeman, for which job were required no more "literary qualifications" (a common expression then...) than reading, writing and arithmetic.
A few months after settling in the capital my brother Francisco two years older, died. Though our living conditions had improved a little after moving, we were never going to be well off.
I was already 13 or 14 when we moved, at last, to our own - but very tiny - house: till then we had lived in parts of houses, with other families. During all this time, and until I came of age I spent many, and very often quite long, periods in the village with my mother's parents Jerónimo Meirinho and Josefa Caixinha.
I was a good pupil at primary school: in the second class I was writing with no spelling mistakes and the third and fourth classes were done in a single year. Then I was moved up to the grammar school where I stayed two years, with excellent marks in the first year, not so good in the second, but was well liked by classmates and teachers, even being elected (I was then 12...) treasurer of the Students' Union... Meanwhile my parents reached the conclusion that, in the absence of resources, they could not go on keeping me in the grammar school. The only alternative was to go to a technical school. And so it was: for five years I learned to be a mechanic. But surprisingly the syllabus at that time, though obviously technically oriented, included, besides French, a literature subject. As I had no books at home (my own books, bought by myself, however with money borrowed from a friend, I would only have when I was 19) the Portuguese language textbooks, with their "anthological" character, were what opened to me the doors of literary fruition: even today I can recite poetry learnt in that distant era. After finishing the course, I worked for two years as a mechanic at a car repair shop. By that time I had already started to frequent, in its evening opening hours, a public library in Lisbon. And it was there, with no help or guidance except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined.
When I got married in 1944, I had already changed jobs. I was now working in the Social Welfare Service as an administrative civil servant. My wife, Ilda Reis, then a typist with the Railway Company, was to become, many years later, one of the most important Portuguese engravers. She died in 1998. In 1947, the year of the birth of my only child, Violante, I published my first book, a novel I myself entitled The Widow, but which for editorial reasons appeared as The Land of Sin. I wrote another novel, The Skylight, still unpublished, and started another one, but did not get past the first few pages: its title was to be Honey and Gall, or maybe Louis, son of Tadeus... The matter was settled when I abandoned the project: it was becoming quite clear to me that I had nothing worthwhile to say. For 19 years, till 1966, when I got to publish Possible Poems, I was absent from the Portuguese literary scene, where few people can have noticed my absence.
For political reasons I became unemployed in 1949, but thanks to the goodwill of a former teacher at the technical school, I managed to find work at the metal company where he was a manager.
At the end of the 1950s I started working at a publishing company, Estúdios Cor, as production manager, so returning, but not as an author, to the world of letters I had left some years before. This new activity allowed me acquaintance and friendship with some of the most important Portuguese writers of the time. In 1955, to improve the family budget, but also because I enjoyed it, I started to spend part of my free time in translation, an activity that would continue till 1981: Colette, Pär Lagerkvist, Jean Cassou, Maupassant, André Bonnard, Tolstoi, Baudelaire, Étienne Balibar, Nikos Poulantzas, Henri Focillon, Jacques Roumain, Hegel, Raymond Bayer were some of the authors I translated. Between May 1967 and November 1968, I had another parallel occupation as a literary critic. Meanwhile, in 1966, I had published Possible Poems, a poetry book that marked my return to literature. After that, in 1970, another book of poems, Probably Joy and shortly after, in 1971 and 1973 respectively, under the titles From this World and the Other and The Traveller's Baggage, two collections of newspaper articles which the critics consider essential to the full understanding of my later work. After my divorce in 1970, I initiated a relationship, which would last till 1986, with the Portuguese writer Isabel da Nóbrega.
After leaving the publisher at the end of 1971, I worked for the following two years at the evening newspaper Diário de Lisboa, as manager of a cultural supplement and as an editor.
Published in 1974 with the title The Opinions the DL Had, those texts represent a very precise "reading" of the last time of the dictatorship, which was to be toppled that April. In April 1975, I became deputy director of the morning paper Diário de Nóticias, a post I filled till that November and from which I was sacked in the aftermath of the changes provoked by the politico-military coup of the 25th November which blocked the revolutionary process. Two books mark this era: The Year of 1993, a long poem published in 1975, which some critics consider a herald of the works that two years later would start to appear with Manual of Painting and Calligraphy, a novel, and, under the title of Notes, the political articles I had published in the newspaper of which I had been a director.
Unemployed again and bearing in mind the political situation we were undergoing, without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer. At the beginning of 1976, I settled for some weeks in Lavre, a country village in Alentejo Province. It was that period of study, observation and note-taking that led, in 1980, to the novel Risen from the Ground, where the way of narrating which characterises my novels was born. Meanwhile, in 1978 I had published a collection of short stories, Quasi Object; in 1979 the play The Night, and after that, a few months before Risen from the Ground, a new play, What shall I do with this Book? With the exception of another play, entitled The Second Life of Francis of Assisi, published in 1987, the 1980s were entirely dedicated to the Novel: Baltazar and Blimunda, 1982, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, 1984, The Stone Raft, 1986, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, 1989. In 1986, I met the Spanish journalist Pilar del Río. We got married in 1988.
In consequence of the Portuguese government censorship of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991), vetoing its presentation for the European Literary Prize under the pretext that the book was offensive to Catholics, my wife and I transferred our residence to the island of Lanzarote in the Canaries. At the beginning of that year I published the play In Nomine Dei, which had been written in Lisbon, from which the libretto for the opera Divara would be taken, with music by the Italian composer Azio Corghi and staged for the first time in Münster, Germany in 1993. This was not the first cooperation with Corghi: his also is the music to the opera Blimunda, from my novel Baltazar and Blimunda, staged in Milan, Italy in 1990. In 1993, I started writing a diary, Cadernos de Lanzarote (Lanzarote Diaries), with five volumes so far. In 1995, I published the novel Blindness and in 1997 All the Names. In 1995, I was awarded the Camões Prize and in 1998 the Nobel Prize for Literature.
From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 1998, Editor Tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1999
This autobiography/biography was written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix Nobel/Nobel Lectures. The information is sometimes updated with an addendum submitted by the Laureate.
·Bacalhau (salt cod) has been a national dish since the fifteenth century, and cinnamon is a common flavoring for desserts, such as the traditional rice pudding ( arroz doce ).
·Port, a wine produced in the region of the upper Douro River, is a major export.
·Furniture, food processing, wineries, and pulp and paper are among the major industrial activities; other important manufacturing industries are leather products, textiles, porcelain, and glassware.
·Portugal's major exports are textiles, clothing and footwear, cork and paper products, machinery, transport equipment, and chemicals, and agricultural products.
·The famous religious shrine Fátima is in the province of Ribatejos, northeast of Lisbon; Fátima is now a place of international pilgrimage for Catholics.
·The most significant national holiday is October 5th, Republic Day, when they commemorate the collapse of the monarchy in 1910.
Literature:Perhaps the best well known Portuguese authors are Fernando Pessoa and José Saramago, who won the Nobel Prize in 1998
·The greatest art forms are architecture and ceramics. The hallmark of Portuguese architecture is azulejos, glazed ceramic tiles that cover the facades and interiors of churches, government buildings, and private homes.
·The national flag, adopted on 19 June 1911 during the First Portuguese Republic (1910–1926), includes an ancient astronomical device (the armillary sphere) used for maritime navigation and represents Portugal's role in global exploration.
·The name "Portugal" derives from a Roman or pre-Roman settlement called Portus Cale
·The Douro River is one of the most important in Portugal.
·Continental Portugal at 35,516 square miles (91,986 square kilometers) occupies approximately a sixth of the Iberian Peninsula. The northwest (the province of Minho) is lush, green, densely populated, and the major source of emigrants. The northeast (the province of Trás-os-Montes) is more mountainous and is divided into a northern region ( terra fria ) with long cold winters and a warmer region ( terra quente ) to the south. The central part (including the provinces of Beira Alta, Beira Baixa, and Beira Litoral) varies from high and desolate mountain plateaus (the Serra da Estrela) to low coastal areas. The provinces of Ribatejo and Estemadura are low-lying regions near Lisbon and the Tagus River. Much industry is concentrated in this area. Southern Portugal, drier and more Mediterranean in climate, includes the provinces of the Alentejo and the Algarve. The Alentejo, an undulating plain with cork trees and wheat fields, was traditionally an important cash-crop area. The Algarve is semitropical with almond, fig, and citrus trees. It is also a region of tourism and fishing.
·Portuguese inhabit the Azores and Madeira islands in the Atlantic.
·The two large cities of Lisbon and Porto are both on the coast.
·The capital is Lisbon. It became the capital in 1298, and is also the political, cultural, economic, educational, and social center.
Fado Music Basics:
