Fado Historiograhy: Old Myths and New Frontiers

Abstract

In April of 1999, several well known fadistas traveled from Lisbon to Wales to perform in the Fifth Annual “Giving Voice” Festival organized by Performance Research International in Aberwystwyth. I had been asked to present a historical lecture comparing fado and flamenco as the preamble to a workshop devoted to the two Iberian musics. Preparing to address several hundred Welsh aficionados, I assembled my lecture notes at a small wooden podium as the fadistas settled into nearby chairs, poised to perform live musical excerpts of fado’s twentieth century evolution. I began my presentation by citing a newly published book which challenged select assumptions concerning fado’s origins. Hoping to draw the crowd’s attention, I described Jose Ramos Tinhorao’s (1994) theory that fado’s roots can be traced to early nineteenth century Brazil, where African traditions inspired a dance form influenced by the seductive Afro-Brazilian “lundu.” The audience members were not as much riveted by my discussion of the latest advances in fado scholarship, as they were by my co-panelists’ impassioned response to it. Rising spontaneously, buoyed by the palpable agitation of his fellow musicians, the guitarist stood up and spoke directly to the audience, “These are the ideas of pseudo-intellectuals. Don’t believe them! They are plain wrong. Fado is Portuguese. Fado was born in Portugal. Fado did not come from Brazil. If it ended up in Brazil, it is because we brought it there. Fado is ours.” This experience introduced me to the high stakes involved in a debate I had thought was simply an academic one. The origins of fado, widely perceived as Portugal’s “national song,” have been the subject of over a century of scholarly speculation and surmise. Over the last several decades, however, in a complex dance “a desafio”-full of twists, turns and the occasional umbigada, fado scholars have challenged certain previously held beliefs making way for what might be perceived as a paradigm shift in the explanation of fado’s cultural genesis. This paper provides a review of the new wave of fado scholarship, paying particular attention to the origins debate and the way in which older notions have been revised according to Portuguese post-colonial theories of the “Brown Atlantic” and its characteristic triangulation between Portugal, Brazil and Africa.