102 forms of traditional Fado found...

Exciting new blog find:
http://fadotradicional.blogspot.com

We haven't yet had the chance to spend much time shifting through the site (and it is in Portuguese), but if you take a look at the right hand side of the webpage you will see 102 links, each to several recordings of a different style of traditional Fado!

We currently have around six songs that we know are forms from this particular list (Fado da defesa, Fado menor, Fado corrido, Fado mouraria, Fado Lopes, Fado menor do porto), but we could be performing more without knowing it yet. Where do we go from here? This is what we signed up for!

It is a part of our mission to pull together this level of resources for the Portuguese language-impaired English speaking Fado aficionados, and soon we hope to have a similar list with recorded examples going on our site for the styles we learn and perform.

We would love to hear from others who have found similar resources so that we can include links here on our blog. Please be in touch! So much to learn...

~ Jordan

Fado Forms (Fado Menor do Porto)

Jordan came home with an iphone full of live fado video from Lisbon last month. I really liked this one in particular. David Mendonça from Fado in the U.S. on facebook finally helped solve the mystery as to which fado form it is. We will most definitely learn this fado.

Here's the video from Jordan's iphone

Sónia Santos

Camané

Celeste Rodrigues !!!!

A History of Portuguese Fado

In 1987 Paul Vernon finds a pile of old fado 78s in a second-hand shop in San Francisco. This was apparently a very good collection because Paul runs off to Lisbon in pursuit of fado a few weeks after this magical find. The result is the book A History of Portuguese Fado published in 1998. It is highly recommended reading in Donald Cohen's Fado Portugues: Songs From the Soul of Portugal as one of the only comprensive histories of fado in English so naturally I had to find it. Our beloved fado librarian Libby Hanssen found the book via inter-library loan and I just finished reading this fantastic resource this week while trapped inside during a midwestern snowstorm.

Libby Hanssen - Librarian extraordinaire

The book begins with a thorough chronology of the History of Portugal and ends with a very useful list of important fado addresses in Portugal and around the world. This book is an adventure waiting to happen.

Contents from "A History of Portuguese Fado"

I found one character particularly interesting. A guitarist known as "Armandinho". He was the inventor of the contra-canto (counter song) style of guitar playing that I find so interesting. The fado guitarist accompanies the singer by floating about within the melody in a quasi out-of-time fashion utilizing florid ornaments and filling in the spaces between vocal lines with improvised counter lines.

from "A History of Portuguese Fado"

Here's a  recording of Armandinho accompanying fado legend Filipe Pinto



Here's a solo recording of Armandinho's "Variations in A major"

Here's an article by Paul Vernon originally published in the magazine FolkROOTS. 

 - Beau Bledsoe

Fado Forms (Fado Dos Sonhos)

Fado of the dreams. Shades of happiness and sadness in the world of dreams.

João Ferreira

Maria Amorim (letra below)

Quer alegres, quer tristonhos

Não há nada como os sonhos

Que me trazem encantado;

E que coisa singular

A gente vê a sonhar

O que não vê acordado

Tive de um sonho o clarão

Sonhei que o teu coração 

P’ra outro peito partiu

Fiquei cheio de surpresa

Mas depois tive a certeza 

Que o sonho não me mentiu

Sonhei que tinhas morrido

Fiquei muito comovido 

Só por ter sonhado assim

Tive um desgosto profundo

Não morreste para o mundo 

Mas morreste para mim

____________________

Maryse Pires

Forms of Fado (Fado Cravo)

What a lovely melody this fado has. Here are three examples with different lyrics.

Ana Sofia Varela

the incomparable Alfredo Marceneiro. It seems that he is the originator of this fado?

and Shay's fav male fado singer - Camané

Forms of Fado (Fado Lopes)

I've been trying to wrap my head around the dizzying array of fado forms so I'm starting this "forms of fado" topic to investigates each one. Hopefully I'll know what most of them are before the big trip to Libson in June. I've been studying flamenco guitar since '93 and that tradition also have many forms called "palos" that one has to familiarize themselves with in order to even start to understand it. I've been learning a popular fado called "fado lopes" that is often played as a solo for the guitarra. It seems that many of the forms are named after their creators so I'm assuming there was a great guitarist by the name of José Lopes that first came up with this set of variations over E minor. That's what google has taught me anyway. As with flamenco, I'm sure there are many that would argue over who did what when but that's what makes it so fun. You need something to talk about over drinks. -Beau Bledsoe

Here's one version from a secondary school

Here's another from a fado house in Alfama (cell phone)

and another from brilliant guitarist Filipe De Sousa

Fado standards

Every year our wonderful hometown of Kansas City births a fresh new crop of jazz musicians that magically materialize around the various jam sessions in town. For these young lions, one of their first steps to becoming a competent jazz musician is to have the jazz “standards” under your belt - memorized and confident in multiple keys. The standards are the set of songs that every jazz musician needs to know. These of course change over time but there are a hundred or so that remain at the core of the repertoire.

It has become evident that there is a parallel set of fado “standards” and we really need to know what they are. We ask all the fado enthusiasts out there to please help us by submitting recommendations for our fado standards list by either commenting on this blog post or writing us an email.

I’ll start the list with the contents of our most important recourse, Fado Portugues: Songs From the Soul of Portugal by Donald Cohen

1. Lisboa Antigua
2. Coimbra
3. Ai, Mouraria
4. Por Morrer uma Andorinha
5. O Embuçado
6. A Rosinha dos Limões
7. Vinte Anos
8. E Foi-se a Mocidade
9. Meu Bairro Alto
10. Valeu a Pena
11. Rosa Enjeitada
12. Fado Hilário
13. Da Janela do Meu Quarto
14. A Moda das Tranças Pretas
15. Júlia Florista
16. O Pagem
17. Bons Tempos
18. Fado da Defesa
19. Lisboa Não Sejas Francesa
20. Há muito quem Cante o Fado
21. Lisboa É Sempre Lisboa
22. Fado Trinta e Um
23. Tamanquinhas
24. Ah, Qunata melancholia
25. Maria Madalena
26. Minha Má foi Cigarreira