Thank you, thank you, thank you. For the love and care that you showed towards my culture, my people and my language. Your article warmed my heart. I hope more people all over the world can fall in love with Fado.
Hi Richard, fascinating and full article. I am currently studying the roots of another Iberian folk music that begins with "f" and embraces some of the sentiments found in your opening paragraph's description of fado. I am talking, of course, about flamenco - and I am interested in what similarities you may have observed, and whether there are any Gypsy/Roma connections to fado that you are aware of. Thanks again, there is much here to start listening to.
Thanks Tony. the fado/flamenco relationship is a really interesting one, and one that would require more space than I have here to cover properly (happy to pick up the discussion elsewhere if useful). Briefly, though, yes there are a lot of parallels and also some important differences.
Parallels:
--both are forms of urban folk music that have become *the* representative sounds of their respective countries;
--both share lyrical themes, as you've noted;
--both have long and complex histories with 'missing parts' (due to lack of documentation), with many parties wishing to claim a major role in the origin stories - I agree with historians who claim that these music genres (along with other genres such as tango, jazz, marab, kroncong, hula, son) are ultimately the products of the cultural mixing that happens in port cities (there's a great book about this by Michael Denning called Noise Uprising, which focuses on the gramophone boom of the mid 1920s, when many of these genres became fixed in style, even if they had histories going back further)
--both have powerful romantic/mythological discourses woven around them about being the soul of the country, encapsulated in similarly untranslatable emotions: duende for Spain, saudade for Portugal - again, as with the comparative genre work by Denning, several writers on nostalgia have pointed out that many countries' terms for longing, yearning and nostalgia are all claimed as 'untranslatable' and understandable only to people of that culture, what Svetlana Boym calls 'grammars of nostalgia' - these views do powerful, important cultural work and I lean into them in my piece here rather than argue against them, but if the cultural essentialism card is going to be played, it needs to explain how, say, a Romani grammar of nostalgia can fit so neatly with a non-Romani one in Southern Spain when it comes to flamenco
--incidentally, there's an interesting piece by Nick Cave from 1999 on 'The Secret Life of the Love Song' where he talks about saudade and duende
Differences
--gypsy/Romani/cigano involvement in fado can't be ruled out--and indeed Maria Severa, the nineteenth century 'mother of fado' was of cigano descent--but most historians these days believe the strongest antecedent for what became fado was an African-Brazilian song and dance style that the Portuguese royal court brought back with them from their exile in Brazil during the Napoleonic era
--although a dance continued to be attached to fado during the 19th century, it did not survive into the twentieth, marking an important difference between fado and flamenco (and tango)
Oh dear, I said I was going to be brief! I'll stop there for now.
Hi Richard, thank you so much for the elaborate reply - way more than I expected, which is why it took a couple of days for me to read and respond. I think there might be more for us to discuss down the line: flamenco is absolutely deeply tied in with Romani/Sinti cultural influence and participation, and it would surprise me if there was such a strong presence in Andalusia but not just a little further west in Portugal. However, that is partly what national borders create - a resistance to immigration and/or influence from outside. As I study my area more, I may come back to you, but there was a ton more in your response than in your article and I am very grateful for it.
Thank you, thank you, thank you. For the love and care that you showed towards my culture, my people and my language. Your article warmed my heart. I hope more people all over the world can fall in love with Fado.
Thank you for the kind words.
Hi Richard, fascinating and full article. I am currently studying the roots of another Iberian folk music that begins with "f" and embraces some of the sentiments found in your opening paragraph's description of fado. I am talking, of course, about flamenco - and I am interested in what similarities you may have observed, and whether there are any Gypsy/Roma connections to fado that you are aware of. Thanks again, there is much here to start listening to.
Thanks Tony. the fado/flamenco relationship is a really interesting one, and one that would require more space than I have here to cover properly (happy to pick up the discussion elsewhere if useful). Briefly, though, yes there are a lot of parallels and also some important differences.
Parallels:
--both are forms of urban folk music that have become *the* representative sounds of their respective countries;
--both share lyrical themes, as you've noted;
--both have long and complex histories with 'missing parts' (due to lack of documentation), with many parties wishing to claim a major role in the origin stories - I agree with historians who claim that these music genres (along with other genres such as tango, jazz, marab, kroncong, hula, son) are ultimately the products of the cultural mixing that happens in port cities (there's a great book about this by Michael Denning called Noise Uprising, which focuses on the gramophone boom of the mid 1920s, when many of these genres became fixed in style, even if they had histories going back further)
--both have powerful romantic/mythological discourses woven around them about being the soul of the country, encapsulated in similarly untranslatable emotions: duende for Spain, saudade for Portugal - again, as with the comparative genre work by Denning, several writers on nostalgia have pointed out that many countries' terms for longing, yearning and nostalgia are all claimed as 'untranslatable' and understandable only to people of that culture, what Svetlana Boym calls 'grammars of nostalgia' - these views do powerful, important cultural work and I lean into them in my piece here rather than argue against them, but if the cultural essentialism card is going to be played, it needs to explain how, say, a Romani grammar of nostalgia can fit so neatly with a non-Romani one in Southern Spain when it comes to flamenco
--incidentally, there's an interesting piece by Nick Cave from 1999 on 'The Secret Life of the Love Song' where he talks about saudade and duende
Differences
--gypsy/Romani/cigano involvement in fado can't be ruled out--and indeed Maria Severa, the nineteenth century 'mother of fado' was of cigano descent--but most historians these days believe the strongest antecedent for what became fado was an African-Brazilian song and dance style that the Portuguese royal court brought back with them from their exile in Brazil during the Napoleonic era
--although a dance continued to be attached to fado during the 19th century, it did not survive into the twentieth, marking an important difference between fado and flamenco (and tango)
Oh dear, I said I was going to be brief! I'll stop there for now.
Hi Richard, thank you so much for the elaborate reply - way more than I expected, which is why it took a couple of days for me to read and respond. I think there might be more for us to discuss down the line: flamenco is absolutely deeply tied in with Romani/Sinti cultural influence and participation, and it would surprise me if there was such a strong presence in Andalusia but not just a little further west in Portugal. However, that is partly what national borders create - a resistance to immigration and/or influence from outside. As I study my area more, I may come back to you, but there was a ton more in your response than in your article and I am very grateful for it.
Cheers, Tony