The Muses of Happiness

I had not heard of Fado until a few years ago I bought a Putumayo CD with cafe songs from different wine-producing countries.  One of these songs was the Fado Velho Fado by Jorge Fernando (hear it:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVcYU5t17-c).

I fell in love with this song’s sound, with the sighing emotion of the singer and the sweetly trilling echos of the guitar.  This particular song was the kind that you never get tired of hearing, both because of the singer’s pleasant hypnotic timbre and the melancholy upbeatness of the tune.  Ah…I had fallen in love with Fado.

But only now, I’m finally learning what it’s all about…a musical form native to Lisbon, Portugal.  A form with roots all the way back to the middle ages, but its modern form being born somewhere around 1825.  On November 21, I heard a report highlighting the wonderful young Fado singer Carminho on WGBH’s The World (http://www.theworld.org/2011/11/carminho/).  Fado is a candidate for World Heritage Status by UNESCO, which candidacy is supported by pop singer Nelly Furtado.  Hearing this report reminded me that I have wanted to try my hand and voice at composing a Fado (what will pass for a Fado for this American composer/singer in any case).

My understanding of Fado is that the lyrics are emotional commentaries on the vagaries, movements, sadness, inevitability of a life, a city, a sea, a love affair, an aging mind and body, and more.  Fado (the word stemming from the Latin fatum (fate)) is the soul reflecting on its own existence and the reality around that existence.  It is also the soul feeling saudade, an untranslatable word that perhaps connotes longing, sadness, “why not?”, “why?”  all in one.  At least, that’s how I interpret it.  The music grew out of the poverty of parts of Lisbon, but to my mind, it transcends place and time.  Who of us on this planet has never had a moment in which we wonder, what if, or, if only, or, such beauty, but it cannot withstand time.

Here is an attempt at Fado.  I will soon compose a melody for this, but this kind of song has to start with the vision, the images, the poetry, the saudade.  One other thing:  the point of the poetry, of the performance, is to make the listener feel a tear come to the eye.  So, if I have succeeded, you should feel overcome with emotion.

I play my instrument

I play my instrument
giving voice to my soul
with every quick pluck
with every fiery chord.

But who here truly
hears my soul’s longing?
I  play for an audience,
but who listens for meaning?

No matter–my soul delights
in telling itself the story,
for each desire sounded
relieves an anguish inside.

Each tone, a lovely gasp,
each chord, a rapturous wounding,
each phrase, a beautiful ache,
each melody, a magnificent malady.

Thus, my soul gives voice
with every string I strum
to this instrument of fate,
singing my heart inside out.