Cristina Branco - Fado Das Sedes - текст песни, слова, перевод, видео

Fádo (Portuguese fado) is one of the most characteristic elements of Portuguese and, first of all, Lisbon culture. One might say, fate set to music. Fados are written in a free manner in the form of four-line stanzas, which are based on some kind of story or just a feeling. There are lyrical and love fados, there are dramatic and even criminal fados. But in any case, they express a state of mind.

Fado is always performed to the accompaniment of a small but twelve-string “Portuguese guitar”. Unlike the Spanish guitar, which acts as a bass, the Portuguese guitar leads the melody. But, interestingly, the guitar itself came to Portugal relatively recently. And, just like the most “Portuguese drink”, port wine, was born with the help of English merchants, so the guitar was brought by merchants and sailors from Foggy Albion.

The English cistra - the predecessor of the "Portuguese guitar" - first appeared in the 18th century in the city of Porto, where it soon became a fashionable instrument in secular salons. And after quite a short time, the guitar became so familiar in the country that it became a completely national musical instrument.

Being a purely Portuguese phenomenon, fado, nevertheless, was formed from a variety of elements. In the romances it is easy to trace the influence of both African and Brazilian music. But especially - the musical and vocal traditions of the Cape Verde Islands. By the way, Cape Verdean music is still very popular in Portugal.

But all these influences were destined to converge in Lisbon. “Athens created sculpture, Rome invented law, Paris invented revolution, Germany discovered mysticism. And what did Lisbon create? Fado,” noted the outstanding Portuguese writer Esa de Queiroz. And all because, he explains, that “Lisbon has still retained the original languor of light and freshness: despite the asphalt, the factories, the gas lamps, the paved embankments, here the springs are still listening to the poems composed by the wind; and doves are still kissing on the rooftops; and one still seems to hear in the silence how the air flows through the cracks of the stone buildings, like the living blood of a melancholy city. And the God-poet has not yet fallen out of favor with the crowd."

The reference to melancholy is not accidental. Whatever Fado is, there is always a certain melancholy and sadness in it, which seems to be in the national character of the Portuguese. And this is not just my opinion..