I have a unique perspective on Fado and on the group Fado Novato as an audio engineer, photographer and videographer. I’m also a musician so I deeply appreciate the music from that perspective, but I haven’t studied it or learned about all of its heroes and tragedies. However, feeling those people and those emotions are inevitable when surrounded by the sounds, smells, flavors and people of Portugal. Having finished mixing and mastering Fado Novato’s first album I now find myself living the role of photographer and documentarian for the group’s travels through the country of Portugal as they navigate the paths of its traditional music. My job is to observe, record and relay the truth as it unfolds with as little interference as possible. The only problem is that I’m the only one in the group that speaks Portuguese fluently so my involvement has to be deeper than the proverbial “fly on the wall”. Combine this lingual understanding with my passion for music and my deep loving relationship with lead vocalist Shay Estes and suddenly you see that my relationship with Fado itself is deeply entangled.
As I watch and record the band’s rehearsals, the performances all over town, the local drinks, food and people what do I capture over and over again? Passion. The music is not one of sadness, as is often presumed, but one of pure passion. It comes as no surprise that it’s a passionate pursuit for Beau, Jordan and Shay because the heritage of this music is rooted in passion for all things beautiful, sad, delicious, rambunctious and sometimes absolutely hilarious. The people are outgoing because they care. They care about their food, their drink, their art and their music. Most of all they care about each other. I don’t mean each other as Portuguese people, I mean each other as humans. It seems obvious to them that we’re all here sharing this time and space together and how better to express it than through music that’s fueled by pure emotion?
Fado is about food, wine, longing, love...even sometimes architecture or cobblestone streets. Most of all, though, it’s about relationships. What are relationships without passion? Empty. Like the bottle of wine and the basket of bread we finished late last night. So, Fado fills the void. It fills our glasses and our plates and motivates us to start again; to fill our brains and our hearts with the things that have fueled mankind for centuries. It’s so nice to see that some of these essential elements are still alive and well somewhere in the world when sometimes in day-to-day American lives they can get so easily overlooked.
If I’m able to convey even a fraction of that story then I feel like I too can enter the realm of the ever-coveted Fadista. A passionate storyteller with something innately human to convey.
No comments:
Post a Comment