Thursday, May 01, 2008
Fadado ao Fado
Old Lisbon Music
From The New Statement, the political roots of Fado:
Old Lisbon is where fado was born in the early 19th century, in the districts of Alfama and Mouraria, which were populated by traders, sailors and fishing families. The Portuguese royal family spent the Napoleonic Wars in exile in Rio de Janeiro, which became the capital of the Portuguese empire from 1808-21. They returned with a whole retinue of Brazilians and Afro-Brazilians, and as such Lisbon has long had a multiracial and assi milado population. Fado (also the name of an Afro-Brazilian dance) was heard in the taverns and brothels of the city's working-class areas. Its first star was a young prostitute called Maria Severa (1820-46), who had a notorious affair with the Count of Vimioso, an aristocratic bullfighter, and introduced fado to high society. Many fado lyrics refer to her by name ("Fado da Severa" is one of the most famous), and both a stage show of 1901 and Portugal's first all-talking sound film, A Severa (1931), were dramatisations of her life.
To Portugal's leading fado historian Rui Vieira Nery, the lyrics of "Fado da Severa" and "Fado Choradinho" ("Fado of the Unfortunate"), written in the mid-19th century, underline the genre's connection to the Lisbon underclass. "There are several texts that were clearly written by people who had been in jail for long periods and this zigzag between legal and illegal lifestyles is very present in those early fados," he explains. It is Nery, with his book Para uma História do Fado ("Towards a History of Fado"), who has surprised even the Portuguese with the secret history of the music they thought they knew so well. "By the late 19th century, fado was essentially a working-class song - very politically committed. You had fados talking about Kropotkin, Bakunin, Marx - and even Lenin later on." One socialist fado from 1900 begins: "May 1st!/Forward! Forward!/O soldiers of freedom!/Forward and destroy/National borders and property."
Such militant fados remained underground, although the more respectable theatrical fado revista ("revue") was popular with the middle classes. In 1882, the cartoonist Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro criticised fado singers (and by implication the Portuguese people), through the character of Zé Povinho ("Poor Zé"), for being too passive and playing whatever song was placed in front of them. The following year, however, another of his cartoons showed politicians at a fado tavern dancing to Zé Povinho's music, but knocking him over in the end. It is clear that, far from being simply nostalgic and sentimental, fado included social and political commentary.
In 1926, after years of political instability, Zé Povinho and the Portuguese people really were knocked over by a coup d'état that installed a fascist dictatorship (led by António Salazar from 1932-68) which lasted nearly half a century. "By the mid-1920s, when the coup took place, fado was for the most part a left-wing, working-class, socialist-oriented type of song," says Nery. "But of course, in a fascist dictatorship, this wouldn't do." In 1927, laws were introduced subjecting all lyrics to censorship. Songs that had not been approved could not be sung in public. "The regime didn't trust fado," Nery says. "It was originally sung by people of ill-repute - prostitutes, thieves and marginals - and that did not carry great prestige for a song of national identity." A 1927 cartoon by Alonso entitled "A Sad, Miserable Life", shows two fadistas, one of them singing, "Cry, politicians, cry", over a subtitle that reads: "O fado, you used to be fado." The implication is that fado has been emasculated. In 1936 the regime ran a series of radio broadcasts entitled Fado, the Song of the Defeated, in effect consigning the genre to history.
From The New Statement, the political roots of Fado:
Old Lisbon is where fado was born in the early 19th century, in the districts of Alfama and Mouraria, which were populated by traders, sailors and fishing families. The Portuguese royal family spent the Napoleonic Wars in exile in Rio de Janeiro, which became the capital of the Portuguese empire from 1808-21. They returned with a whole retinue of Brazilians and Afro-Brazilians, and as such Lisbon has long had a multiracial and assi milado population. Fado (also the name of an Afro-Brazilian dance) was heard in the taverns and brothels of the city's working-class areas. Its first star was a young prostitute called Maria Severa (1820-46), who had a notorious affair with the Count of Vimioso, an aristocratic bullfighter, and introduced fado to high society. Many fado lyrics refer to her by name ("Fado da Severa" is one of the most famous), and both a stage show of 1901 and Portugal's first all-talking sound film, A Severa (1931), were dramatisations of her life.
To Portugal's leading fado historian Rui Vieira Nery, the lyrics of "Fado da Severa" and "Fado Choradinho" ("Fado of the Unfortunate"), written in the mid-19th century, underline the genre's connection to the Lisbon underclass. "There are several texts that were clearly written by people who had been in jail for long periods and this zigzag between legal and illegal lifestyles is very present in those early fados," he explains. It is Nery, with his book Para uma História do Fado ("Towards a History of Fado"), who has surprised even the Portuguese with the secret history of the music they thought they knew so well. "By the late 19th century, fado was essentially a working-class song - very politically committed. You had fados talking about Kropotkin, Bakunin, Marx - and even Lenin later on." One socialist fado from 1900 begins: "May 1st!/Forward! Forward!/O soldiers of freedom!/Forward and destroy/National borders and property."
Such militant fados remained underground, although the more respectable theatrical fado revista ("revue") was popular with the middle classes. In 1882, the cartoonist Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro criticised fado singers (and by implication the Portuguese people), through the character of Zé Povinho ("Poor Zé"), for being too passive and playing whatever song was placed in front of them. The following year, however, another of his cartoons showed politicians at a fado tavern dancing to Zé Povinho's music, but knocking him over in the end. It is clear that, far from being simply nostalgic and sentimental, fado included social and political commentary.
In 1926, after years of political instability, Zé Povinho and the Portuguese people really were knocked over by a coup d'état that installed a fascist dictatorship (led by António Salazar from 1932-68) which lasted nearly half a century. "By the mid-1920s, when the coup took place, fado was for the most part a left-wing, working-class, socialist-oriented type of song," says Nery. "But of course, in a fascist dictatorship, this wouldn't do." In 1927, laws were introduced subjecting all lyrics to censorship. Songs that had not been approved could not be sung in public. "The regime didn't trust fado," Nery says. "It was originally sung by people of ill-repute - prostitutes, thieves and marginals - and that did not carry great prestige for a song of national identity." A 1927 cartoon by Alonso entitled "A Sad, Miserable Life", shows two fadistas, one of them singing, "Cry, politicians, cry", over a subtitle that reads: "O fado, you used to be fado." The implication is that fado has been emasculated. In 1936 the regime ran a series of radio broadcasts entitled Fado, the Song of the Defeated, in effect consigning the genre to history.
# posted by Lamb Mouton @ 9:48 AM 
