Amália rediscovered

After a long time without writing, I am finally back to bring the good news: the movie about Amália´s life will premiere on December 4th. This is perhaps the most intimate and charming movie made about the life of our beloved diva. It portraits Amália not only as a terrific fado singer, not only her career, but most importantly, it shows Amália the woman, the amazing woman behind the singer. Flirtatious, kind, passionate, sensitive, strong, romantic, faithful,…a heart full of emotions!!! I post here the trailer of the movie (starring the talented Sandra Barata Belo) and I also leave here the promo trailer of a documentary (The Art of Amalia), in English, that was made by Bruno Almeida and was released a long time ago, in December 2000 (only recently I found it).

Can´t wait for December 4th (with a little bit luck I might even watch it in Lisbon, surrounded with some friends who are also great fans of Amália! Oxalá!).

The Art of Amalia, Documentary, December 2000


Amália, the movie, December 4th 2008

"Lady of the Sea"

This was the title of the song yesterday interpreted by Vânia Fernandes at the Eurovision song contest. And what a magnificent interpretation it was...Portugal won yesterday! It won a beautiful song to his already dense repertoire of songs, full of heart and passion with a theme that totally speaks to our soul: a song about the sea and its mystical force; a song with the warm sound of the guitar on the background, the romantic lyrics and the powerful voice of Vania, sometimes resembling Dulce Pontes. The almost sacred and somewhat solemn way the dancers stood along with her also pleased me. This is the kind of music WE like and the kind of songs our soul needs- cherishes it! I don´t even understand why we waist our time in these kind of contests (I must confess I don´t like it, never did and never will- no matter what happens, even If one day Portugal wins I will still not like it!! It´s a complete joke....). We don´t need to prove or show anything: why should something so precious be shared with people who prefer butt-shaking-american-inspired crap? Beautiful faces, empty songs... I am proud we stood loyal to our culture, to our language, to our feelings and to our authenticity! That´s the way to go! This same authenticity and faith on ourselves led us long time ago to explore the world through the unknown, mysterious, infinite sea! The poets romantically say that the Portuguese coastline resembles that of a human face looking to the sea, or in other words, having his back turned to Europe, like Fernando Pessoa brilliantly expresses on the following poem:

The Field of the Castles

Europe lies, reclining upon her elbows:

From East to West she stretches, staring,

And romantic tresses fall over

Greek eyes, reminding.

The left elbow is stepped back;

The other laid out at an angle.

The first says Italy where it leans;

This one England where, set afar,

The hand holds the resting face.

Enigmatic and fateful she stares

Out West, to the future of the past.

The staring face is Portugal.

in "Message"

I guess that´s a big true and after these "European assemblies" like the singing contest (where we expect to see the "friends" we have) we get the weird feeling we were always alone and that we don´t really belong to Europe. We belong instead to Africa (Cape Verde, Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, S. Tomé e Principe...), to America (Brasil), to India (Goa, Damão, Dio...), we belong to east Timor and to Macau. Our connections, our roots are far way from Europe... our friends, the real ones, who share our culture, our music our language, who appreciate our traditions they live far from here and we are always "looking" to embrace them... For a long time we lost the discernment to see what really suits our character; we were pressured to adopt foreign cultural models and ways of living and we were "forced" to eventually adapting to them but we remained always unsatisfied with that, like a custom that never fits, we were tortured with this discomforting feeling of never being really a part of the clan! But I feel things are changing and we are starting to "see" again what suits us, what we really are and what we really need in this stupid massified society; I see a light on the end of the tunnel: may the music feed our starved soul so that we regain the courage to make it our own! And like the same Fernando Pessoa once said "Portugal must yet be fulfilled..."

Lady of the seas
Before you, I'm fallen
Who comes and takes half of life and peace
From this table, from this house, now lost?
Love, what's happened with you?

Lady of the sea
Before you, my soul is empty
Who comes and takes what is mine?
Oh high sea, bring me
My endless love

CHORUS

Ah, black waters, waves of sorrow
They froze the fire in my eyes
He's not sailing anymore
And nobody sees you crying
Lady of the sea

"O mare e tu" (The Sea and You)

I´ve been having a lot of work recently and very little time to write on my blogs.
To overcome the
tiresomeness I listen to music.
Here I leave you with one of the most surprising and
beautiful duets I´ve ever heard: Dulce Pontes and Giorgios Dalaras.
It surely helps you to forget the worries of a long day...hope you like it!

The Aesthetics of Saudade

I post here a philosophy work by Leandro Feldmann ; although it is a bit "dense" I decided not to cut any parts because I find the whole document precious!
...........................................

1 - Introduction

Along the centuries, and today still, the word saudade became one of the most recurrent expressions concerning Portugal, and of an enormous value to its literature and cultural history. Since the Portuguese King Dom Duarte, the first to theorize about saudade, until the Saudosismo , when the saudade reached the peak of its importance, a great value was given to the subject, which caused more and more an increase of the meanings attributed to it.

The fact that the first attempt of defining saudade was made precisely by a king must certainly have influenced so many other Portuguese to gain interest about the theme, not so much because of his somewhat clumsy definition (“Ssuydade precisely is the feeling that the heart fails because it is apart from the presence of someone or some persons whom it loves very much by affection” – Dom Duarte, 1973, p. 16) , but primarily because he promotes the creation of a nationalist feeling concerning the expression, by saying that there wasn’t any equivalent word to “ssuydade” in Latin and other languages.

In the beginning of the XX century the Portuguese Renaissance emerged, a cultural movement with a nationalist character aiming to stimulate a regeneration of the Portuguese culture. The movement, whose most important mentor was Teixeira de Pascoaes, appropriated the expression saudade as a symbol of its ideal that the Portuguese Culture has an universal dimension and, only disclosing the Portuguese language, it would be possible to understand what it means to be Portuguese.

The treatment of saudade as a symbol of the Portuguese culture culminates in the aesthetic movement emerged during the Second War, the Saudosismo, which declared the incrustation of philosophy in the history, language and culture, and the expression was also a symbol of this thought, to the point of being declared that "in Saudade existed the secret of their race". (1976)

This identification of saudade with the Lusitanian spirit is divided between the serious development of the theme by the Saudosismo and the exaggerated treatment related to a vain Portuguese nationalism. The claiming of the untranslatability of saudade is also divided between these two sides. On the nationalist side the claiming makes no sense, because there are equivalents to the general meaning of the word in other languages; what is really untranslatable is the meaning of it specifically when approached by the Saudosismo, which have indeed elaborated an intense philosophy of saudade. That is what shall be demonstrated from now on.

2 - Saudade: feeling caused by missing someone or something

According to what Ludwig Wittgenstein explains in his Philosophical Investigations, it isn’t possible to express truth through discourse, because language can only deal significantly with a small parcel of reality. But this doesn’t mean that the inexpressible is inexistent: With the simple question “how a clarinet sounds?”(Wittgenstein, 1986, p. 36), Wittgenstein shows to be perfectly possible knowing what something is, but being unable to express it.

Since it is possible to know something inexpressible, it seems unnecessary to try to establish a relation of perfect synonymy between the term saudade and other terms from other languages, but considering saudade in its common daily used meaning, the fact is that their equivalents have practically the same significance.

By comparing the definitions of some of the equivalents this will be clearer: the Portuguese definition states that saudade is a “Nostalgic remembrance and, at the same time, smooth, from distant or extinct people or things, accompanied by the desire either of seeing or possessing them again”; the French definition of “regret” is a “Painful state of conscience caused by the separation from a good”; the Spanish defines “añoranza” as the “act of añorar” and defines “añorar” as “recollect with pity the absence, privation or loss of a beloved person or thing”; the German defines “Sehnsucht” as “the yearn for someone or something” and the definition of “Sehnen” is “To desire with a strong, painful feeling that someone, who isn’t present, would be so; to have something that is missing”; finally, the English definition of the noun longing is “yearning; missing someone or something”. Apart of controversies or translators difficulties, this last English definition is an accurate one for the general meaning of saudade, the same meaning that Portuguese speakers like to say there are no equivalents for in other languages.

3 - The Aesthetics of Saudade

There are, therefore, equivalent words to saudade in other languages; what differs between them is, according to Carolina Michaelis, “the importance and the frequency of saudade in the Portuguese language (…), this je ne sais quoi of mystery that adheres to it”(Michaelis, 1986, p. 145) According to Moreira de Sá, “some people have tried to justify (this jene sais quois), whether by saying it is an ethnic substrate, or by historical reasons which allowed to emphasize and improve this feeling in the Portuguese people’s soul.” (1992. P. 88) In reality, this je ne sais quoi is also divided between the nationalist feeling and the philosophical meanings elaborated by the Saudosismo.

From the first one derives only the futile claiming of the inexistence of the word in other languages, which was already analyzed and dismantled above. Following, ultimately, the most important meanings attached to saudade will be analyzed. These main secondary significances of saudade are: melancholy, androgyny, childhood and recollection of God.

E Marânus, olhando a clara névoa,

Sonho doce do mar, ali pousado,

Meditava: aonde vai o sonho humano,

Quando de nós se afasta, já sonhado?

E ficamos mais tristes e sozinhos,

A cada sonho que findou, no mundo.

E, a cada etérea nuvem que se forma,

Torna-se mais salgado o mar profundo.

And Marânus, looking at the bright mist,

Sweet dream of the sea, standing there,

Meditated: whiter goes the human dream,

When smoothed away from us, already dreamed?

And we become sadder and more alone,

Every dream that finishes, in the world.

And, every ethereal cloud that is shaped,

It becomes saltier the deep sea.

(Pascoaes, 1920, p.219)

The melancholy, described by Leopardi as "the most sublime of human feelings" (Leopardi. Apud Ginzburg, 1995, p. 106-107), is caused by the acknowledgement of the earthen world as something transitional and limited. This world-view underlines the individual self-criticism, allowing him to think and feel in a different manner, granting him a contemplative capacity required for philosophy and literature.

Melancholy is usually created by the absence of something, may it be a person, a place, one’s health, etc. Marânus, the character symbol of the Saudosismo, from the book Marânus, by Teixeira de Pascoaes, lives indeed in a melancholic condition, and in his case, it happens due to the saudade he feels of Eleonor.

Ítalo Calvino proposes in Six Memos for the Next Millenium a theory that in a diffuse manner literature results from the melancholy (Calvino, 1990, ps. 32 e 64-5). Thus, Leonardo Coimbra is not wrong when he identifies saudade as being the “Portuguese form of creation” (Coimbra, Apud. Costa e Gomes, 1976, p. 64). In this and in many other cases, the Saudade could really be considered the Portuguese form of creating melancholy, which in its turn is the basic form of creation.

“Gostava de sofrer a etérea mágoa,

Que nos prende ao passado.”

“He liked to suffer the ethereal grievance,

That attach us to the past.” (Pascoaes, 1920, p. 193)

4 - Everything is Translatable

What is really important here is not to overvalue what is nothing more than a translation difficulty, that is, not to overvalue the word in detriment of the significance. The best thing to do before setting a general translation rule is to remember Faust’s words while translating the bible:

Geschrieben steht:

»Im Anfang war das Wort!«

Hier stock ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort?

Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmöglich schätzen,

Ich muß es anders übersetzen,

Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin.

Geschrieben steht: Im Anfang war der Sinn.

Bedenke wohl die erste Zeile,

Daß deine Feder sich nicht übereile!

Ist es der Sinn, der alles wirkt und schafft?

Es sollte stehn: Im Anfang war die Kraft!

Doch, auch indem ich dieses niederschreibe,

Schon warnt mich was, daß ich dabei nicht bleibe.

Mir hilft der Geist! Auf einmal seh ich Rat Und schreibe getrost: Im Anfang war die Tat!

It is written:

"In the beginning was the Word!"

Here I’m already stuck! Who’ll help me going further?

I cannot possibly prize the Word so high,

I must translate it otherwise

If I am correctly enlightened by the spirit.

It is written:

“In the beginning was the Meaning”.

Consider well the first line,

So your pen will not be precipitated!

Is the meaning, what produces and creates everything?

It should be:

In the beginning was the Force!

Yet, even while I write this down

Something warns me already, that I won’t stick with it.

The spirit helps me! Finally I find advice

And confident I write:

In the beginning was the Action.

The chief concerning while translating shouldn’t be fidelity merely to the word. The word is produced based on a Meaning, a Force, an Action or whatever, no doubt, comes first. Naturally these concepts may seem too blurred, but it’s perfectly possible to understand their relevance. Thus, it is necessary to mainly concern about what significance was given to a word based on, according to Faust’s four attempts, what was there in the beginning. One must consider a word’s meaning and background, then find the equivalent word based not simply on it, but on its significance. There may exist indeed words without equivalents in other languages; what is always translatable is the significance of the words, which can always be explained and incorporated. The difficulty is usually to understand the proper significance of each word, and not so much in finding equivalents.

In the specific case of saudade, this matter about existing or not equivalents to the word only deviates the attention from the feeling’s significance, which should be the central point.

Saudade is, therefore, one of the deepest human feelings, and the greatness of its power is exactly that it transcends itself, creating other feelings, which, by their turn, stimulate men. And that’s certainly one of the difficulties of translating or even grasping the philosophical significance of saudade: saudade becomes greater and deeper while illuminating other feelings, but it also becomes more difficult to understand it. If this is not enough, we can quote Marânus for a last time:

Eu não sou a alegria, mas apenas

A trágica matéria que a produz.

Na grande escuridão, sou facho a arder

E não avisto minha própria luz!

I am not happiness, but only

The tragic substance that produces it.

In the great darkness, I am a burning flambeau

And I don’t see my own light.

(Pascoaes, 1920, p.216)

A book about Fado

Fado Portugues: Songs from the soul of Portugal

Compiled and edited by Donald Cohen

with Music arranged for voice and guitar.

Includes CD with 26 classic recordings.

Donald Cohen, a retired Los Angeles attorney and fado expert, says that although fado in its current form is about 200 years old, its roots go back to the 12th century to traditions of song and poetry brought by Provencal troubadours, the Moors who lived in Portugal, and the Jews.

But it’s sad, longing spirit was defined by Portugal’s days as a great colonial power in the 16th century, when it sent generations of men overseas. It’s called saudade, a complex combination of nostalgia, sadness and a profound connection with fate.

“The Portuguese were the great explorers of the era…and that’s where this idea of saudade came – these men were out of the country for years at a time,” said Cohen, who will publish a book on fado this fall. “Saudade comes from the Latin word that became soledad – loneliness in Spanish. But saudade means more than that: it’s nostalgic soulful yearning for what may or may never have been. It could be for your husband who is gone, who may never come back. It’s consumed by fate.”

Fado is one of the most rewarding and least known genres in the world music spectrum. “Fado is very rich in history musically and lyrically. It’s also still kind of a secret,” said Tom Schnabel, a producer at KCRW, a Los Angeles public radio station known for its world-music programming.

“Like other things in Portuguese culture, it has been untouched. Everybody knows flamenco, about tango, about bossa nova. But when you say, ‘What about fado?’ they say, ‘Huh?’ While I want to see that change, it also makes it an undiscovered musical treasure.”

Excerpted from the Miami Herald,

The Sweet Sigh of Sadness,

May 7, 2003

Buy it here! ;)

Easter Traditions: a scent of Minho!

Fortunately I was born in the northern Portuguese region of Minho where traditions are still very alive! Here some photos of Easter in my place with the typical food dishes: the roasted lamb with potatoes, rice, vegetables and wonderful bread and wine, of course!

and the sweets, "pastry temptations" where the "yellow" is the king! (my cholesterol! ouch! :P)

We also eat lots of chocolates, mostly chocolate eggs and the chocolate almonds with different colours and flavours. My favourites are those powdered with icing sugar and cinnamon: we call them "Ceilão"(Ceylon) almonds, which is the former name for Sri Lanka (you can guess why we call them Ceilão...)

It´s also very typical to boil eggs with onion peel so they get a auburn colour; these eggs are mostly to decorate the table!. The flowers are also very important and we buy some fresh flowers to put around the house: Easter is the celebration of Spring!

And of course, last but not the least, as Christians we "open the door" to the priest who starts by saying "Jesus Christ resurrected!Alleluia! Alleluia!" and sprinkles holly water at the people (sometimes you really take a bath! :P) and then gives us the crucified Christ so that we can kiss His feet or His face (you choose! :P).

Of course you pay for this short "visit": we gave the priest a sealed envelope with our family name written outside and with 60 euros inside, because the Church would never EVER do anything for his followers without charging them ("you give what you want, but usually people give us not less than 20 euros"---HYPOCRITES! ( my critics to the Catholic Church are endless...I´ll leave them for some other time and space...the only good thing about the Church is that she preaches God´s word, His teachings and keeps the memory of Christ alive. The Institution itself is...I don´t even know what to call it!)

Wonders of Portugal: monuments, places, music, poetry, unique cultural heritage! The Past and Future of bright Nation...

I was watching videos of Dulce Pontes searching for duets (by the way...do you know that Dulce sings in greek? here!!) and I found this video. It´s a compilation of pictures of some of the most beautiful Portuguese pieces of architecture (and many are not shown!). The background songs are sang by Dulce and are called: "Fado Português" and "O Infante"- beautiful, beautiful, beauuuuutiful songs, I got tears in my eyes! I´ll leave here the translation of the 2nd because it´s a poem I like very much...can you guess why? ;)

THE PRINCE (O INFANTE)

"God will, Man dreams, the work is born.

God willed that all the earth be one,

That seas unite and never separate.

You He blessed, and you went forth to read the foam.

And the white shore lit up, isle to continent,

And flowed, even to the world's end,

and suddenly the earth was seen complete,

Upsurging, round, from blue profundity.

Who blessed you made you Portuguese.

Us He gave a sign: the sea's and our part in you.

The Sea fulfilled, the Empire fell apart.

Lord, Portugal must yet fulfil itself!"

Fernando Pessoa,
"Mensagem"

This book, "Message", is the most mystical of all Pessoa´s work. Here he reinforces the everlasting theory of the 5th Empire. I won´t tell much more about this, by now; It is a fascinating theory about which I´ll write soon. For now get the idea that "Portugal must yet fulfil itself!" ;)

Detail of the nose of NRP Sagres sail training ship, where you can see a representation of Infante D. Henrique to whom the poem is dedicated.

“After his return from Ceuta, Henry the navigator founded a school of navigation in Sagres, which was a place to discuss the art of navigation. The vessel employed in the beginning of the Discoveries was the caravel, varying from 50 to 160 tons. The first results came soon and Gonçalves Zarco discovers Porto Santo Island in 1419 and Madeira Island in 1420, Diogo de Silves discovers the azorean island of Santa Maria in 1427. In 1424 Gil Eanes crosses the Cape Bojador. Diogo Cão and Bartolomeu Dias arrived to the mouth of Zaire River in 1482 and the second crosses the Cape of Good Hope in 1487. The greatest achievement of these exploration voyages was attained by Vasco da Gama, whom between 1497 and 1499 discovers the sea route to India.” on wiki

Carlos do Carmo wins Goya Award

The Goya Awards, known in Spanish as Los Premios Goya, are Spain's main national film awards, considered the Spanish equivalent to the American Academy Awards.

The awards were established in 1987, a year after the founding of the Academia de las Artes y las Ciencias Cinematográficas de España, and the first awards ceremony took place on March 16, 1987 at the Teatro Lope de Vega, Madrid. The ceremony continues to take place annually around the end of January, and awards are given to films produced during the previous year. For the first time in the history of this ceremony an award was given to a Portuguese : Carlos do Carmo. He won the prize for best original song with "Fado da Saudade" which was performed in Saura´s movie "Fados". It is wonderful to see Carmo being recognized for his work specially because he has been dedicating his life to singing and promoting fado; a 45 year-old career! He surely deserves all the awards he is nominated for! :)

Monk Rider: the journey through the Self

"From the valley to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill, Horse of shadow, monk rider. Through houses, through meadows, Through gardens, through fountains, In alliance you walk. From the valley to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill, Horse of shadow, monk rider. Through black cliffs, Behind and ahead, In secrecy you walk. From the valley to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill, Horse of shadow, monk rider. Through desert meadows, Without horizons, In freedom you walk.

From the valley to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill, Horse of shadow, monk rider. Through trackless ways, Through rivers without bridges, In solitude you walk. From the valley to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill, Horse of shadow, monk rider. For it is endless And accounted by no one, In me you walk. Through black cliffs, Through rivers without bridges, In me you walk."

Every fado is beautiful and has a deep meaning. But of course some have a more spiritual meaning than others. “Monk rider” is an example. It was written by Fernando Pessoa and every word goes far beyond its material meaning: every single word is a symbol in this poem. This fado tells about a monk (a reflexive, introspective,lonely, spiritual human being) that rides his horse, a “horse of shadow” I dare to say our fears, our desires, the beast within us, the “shadowed” beast (the Minotaur in the centre of our own psychological labyrinth), our Self, our Soul after all... and he rides this dark animal “Through houses” (shelters, places of quietude, human warmth,) “through meadows” (places of action) “Through gardens” (pureness of feelings, the contemplation, meditation), “through fountains” (the fluidity of time, the purification) ” Through trackless ways, Through rivers without bridges,” “Through black cliffs”…through the hardest and most sinuous ways, in the most difficult and lonely journey, this monk rider keeps on walking “From the valley, to the mountain, From the mountain to the hill” meaning with this going from the darkest side of oneself to the brightest! From the Shadow to the Light. This is a lonely, constant, endless, “without horizons” way to go.

This is the journey of self discovery. “Know yourself, defy your limits” was Socrates motto meaning with this that if you want to value the light, the perfection you first have to go deeper, and experience the darkness.

For this video, Mariza (of course, who else?) chose for scenario the “Quinta da Regaleira” in Sintra* one of the most mystical places of Portugal. And she brilliantly transformed this poem into a Fado. A Fado for life. A lesson for Humans. In a world of “busy people” a poem made song tells how to conquer ourselves. How lucky are we?

*The name “Sintra” has its origin in the word “Cynthia“, symbol of the moon in the celtic mythology. The Romans called it “Mons Lunae“, meaning “the hill of the moon“, and there were deeds sacrifices in its honour. This mystical stigma has been maintained until our times.
Sintra is a romantic getaway for people from all around the world, and has always been a place of election by kings and nobles as a country resort, and praised by writers and poets.

Teixeira de Pascoaes: the poet (philosopher?) of Saudosism

My favourite poet of all times is the great Fernando Pessoa and about him you can find an "ocean" of information in the web including translated texts, poems, a little bit of everything (he also wrote many poems originally in English and that made him even more well-known). He was the writer of the beautiful fado "There is a song of people", stunningly sung recently by Mariza, among others. But the very essence of fado is "saudade" and Teixeira de Pascoaes theorized about it. He is the most profound and complete philosopher on this "issue" of the portuguese Alma.

So, who was Teixeira de Pascoaes ?

A mystic poet who felt profoundly connected to the humblest things and to the brightest stars, Teixeira de Pascoaes was born and died in the small town of Amarante, in northern Portugal, and led a relatively uneventful life. In 1896 he went to Coimbra to study law, though poetry and contemplation were his favorite endeavors. University life was, at the time, a rather boisterous affair, but Pascoaes kept out of student brawls and political rows, devoting himself to study and writing. He published his first three books of poems while at university (not counting the book, later repudiated, that he had published a year before arriving at Coimbra), and these already show his attraction to an idealized nature, to the darkly mysterious, to the vague and ethereal. He worked for a few years as a lawyer and a judge, but then retreated, as it were, into his inner life. He was by no means a recluse, however. His religiosity had a missionary side: Pascoaes became the chief apostle and theoretician of saudosismo.

Saudosismo was a movement that promulgated saudade as a national spiritual value that could have transformational power. Saudade means “longing, nostalgia, yearning” for something absent, but it is a feeling fraught with more emotional weight and affective intensity than corresponding words from English and other languages convey. Pascoaes gave this unique Portuguese word a philosophical and spiritual twist. In an article published in 1913, he wrote that “saudade is creation, a perpetual and fruitful marriage of Remembrance with Desire, of Evil with God, of Life with Death . . .”. And in a conference delivered that same year, he spoke of “the action of desire on remembrance and of remembrance on desire, the two intimate elements of saudade”, described elsewhere in the conference as “the perfect and living fusion of Nature and the Spirit”. Saudade was, in Pascoaes’ conception, a species of élan vital.

From 1910 to 1916, Pascoaes was editor of A Águia, an Oporto-based magazine that became the mouthpiece for the Renascença Portuguesa (Portuguese Renaissance), a movement of which saudosismo was part and parcel. It was by cultivating saudade, considered to be the defining characteristic of the ‘Portuguese soul’, that a national renaissance was supposed to take place. This signified not “a simple return to the Past” (wrote Pascoaes in A Águia in 1912) but a “return to the original wellsprings of life in order to create a new life”. To achieve this Renaissance he advocated, among other things, the establishment of a Portuguese Church, which could better accommodate the original spirit of the nation, part Christian but also part pagan.

The nationalist program of saudosismo is only latently felt in most of Pascoaes’ poetry, for his bent was predominantly spiritual, and in a lecture delivered in the last year of his life, he remarked: “Man does not belong only to society; he belongs, first and foremost, to the Cosmos. Society is not an end but a means for facilitating man’s mission on earth, which is to be the consciousness of the Universe." This point of view informs virtually all of his poetry, which is, in large measure, a pantheistic celebration of life – not just life on earth, but also the life of the imagination and the universe. In the early poem ‘Poet’, he states that “I am, in the future, time past” – the embodiment, in effect, of saudade. He claims to be “a mountain cliff”, “an astral mist”, “a living mystery”, “God’s delirium”, and so on, which is why he also says, “I’m man fleeing from himself”. Not limited to his own body, he connects with the rest of reality, to the point of interpenetrating and becoming its other manifestations.

Pascoaes’ universe is one of correspondences between seeming opposites: the past with the future, nostalgia with hope, sorrow with joy, the material with the spiritual. The dynamic nature of this unity of opposites is well expressed by two verses greatly admired by Fernando Pessoa: “The leaf that fell /Was a soul that ascended” (from a poem titled ‘Elegy of Love’). Far from being a fixed machine of integrated moving parts, Pascoaes’ universe is in continual expansion, through the creative energy of hope, sorrow, desire, saudade. Just as poetic inspiration leaves “the splendor of a verse” on the printed page, “so too hope, endlessly burning, (…) / Leaves in space the forms of the Universe, (…) / Mortal recollections of its divine being” (in ‘Indefinite Song XXII’). And man, through his “living encounter” with the things of Nature “gives birth to souls, / Divine apparitions” (in ‘Encounter’).

Profoundly religious in spirit, Pascoaes did not seem to have or to need any clear notion of God. His poetry is an ongoing hymn to a Nature made divine, in which man’s role is to see and sing it.

"Fado with them"

Some of the most extraordinary voices of fado compiled in this double cd. Now I know what I really want for Christmas! :)

Lisbon tour : irresistible!!

A friend of mine sent me this amazing video and I just can´t help to post it here. Fado was born in Lisbon so this is a "must visit" city for fado lovers. All about the way of living of the "Lisboetas" here:

Madredeus: the end

After 21 years of total dedication to Madredeus, Teresa Salgueiro is leaving. I couldn´t believe when I read in the news and I was expecting it to be a misunderstanding but it was proven correct and that angelic, ethereal voice is really leaving and so putting an end to one of the most beautiful and portuguese (very portuguese!) bands that ever existed.

Quoting from wiki:

"Madredeus (pron. IPA: [ma.dɾɨ.'ðewʃ]) is a Portuguese band. Their music combines fado influences with modern folk music.

The band's founding members were Pedro Ayres Magalhães (Classical guitar), Rodrigo Leão (keyboard synthesizer), Francisco Ribeiro (cello) and Teresa Salgueiro (vocals). Magalhães and Leão formed the band in 1985, Ribeiro joined in 1986. They'd been searching for a female singer, and found Teresa Salgueiro in one of Lisbon's night clubs. Teresa liked their music and agreed to join, so in 1987 Madredeus recorded their first album, Os dias da Madredeus ("The days of Madredeus").

The first album was recorded in their rehearsal space, a disused abbey in Lisbon. The recording was especially strenuous due to deafening interruptions every 5 minutes from Lisbon's tram service, which ran directly above. In honour of this unavoidable presence in their every performance, they named themselves after the line's nearby terminus, Madre de Deus (Mother of God), shortened to the vernacular Madredeus.

In 1993, Pedro Ayres Magalhães left the band temporarily and was replaced in live concerts by José Peixoto (Classical guitar). Magalhães rejoined the group later, making it a sextet with two guitarists.

They released several albums and became very popular in Portugal, but remained relatively unknown outside the country. This changed in 1994 when Wim Wenders, impressed by their music, asked Madredeus to perform in his movie Lisbon Story - the soundtrack gave the band international fame. Thanks to that, Madredeus spread their wings to the world and conquered fans from all over Europe, South America, Africa and Asia.

In 1994 Rodrigo Leão left the band to start a solo career, being replaced by Carlos Maria Trindade (keyboard synthesizer).

In 1997 Francisco Ribeiro and Gabriel Gomes left the band as Madredeus' style started abandoning its fado roots with the release of O Paraíso. At this time Fernando Júdice (Acoustic bass guitar) was invited to join them, to form the current line-up, again a quintet. Madredeus has sold over 3 million albums worldwide."

From their site we can read on the biography

"(This music's long journey) found a definitive form when the voice was found. Teresa Salgueiro was the perfect heart for the group's melodies and words. When the first album -- 1987's "Os Dias da Madredeus", recorded at the Xabregas Convent church -- was released, many realised they were witnessing something unique and universal. Serene, ethereal songs, carrying a whispering, almost secret "Portugueseness", songs we all knew but whose shape we'd never been able to imagine (...)

The Portuguese received them warmly and spontaneously; the opinions were split evenly between passionate fascination and quasi-religious reverence. It was then understood the extraordinary journey of Madredeus had begun.

From "Existir" (1990) onwards, Madredeus traveled with their music to other lands, lands that recognised easily and applauded the emotions and stories the group conveys. The language may not always be understood, but Madredeus have a strange alchemy that manages to make unique feelings universally shared.

1993 was the year the group went truly global, with concert appointments spreading throughout the world. Madredeus were no longer Portugal's own, but remained stubbornly Portuguese through and through."

Here is a video with one of my favourite songs Haja o que houver" [Come what may (I wait for you)"] from the album Paraíso

All the good things come to an end. And Teresa has now other projects such as this (I post here) with the polish composer Zbigniew Preisner - Silence, Night & Dreams



And once again we lost a voice of fado...for the world!
I am sad and proud at the same time.
...
Very sad.

Souzana & Eleni Vougioukli , Greeks singing fado...

A famous Portuguese Fado song, Solidão (Canção do Mar) [Solitude, (Song of the Sea)]
performed live at Mylos, Thessaloniki on May 2006.

Here is the original http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7482IMhknnU
sang by Amália Rodrigues

As you can see, surprisingly!, there is not much of a big difference between the two interpretations!! ok, Amalia speaks Portuguese a lot better! :D but in terms of "feeling" the Greeks really got the picture... :)

Congratulations!!

Definitely, Fado was made for the World!***

and I feel proud for that!

Magdi Ruzsa, Hungarians singing fado...

very well done! It is always a wonderful surprise to listen to people from other nationalities singing the music of Portugal. There are parts on the song were I can really understand good articulated Portuguese ;) and the most fascinating thing is that she understood the feeling of fado!

And btw, the fado is called "O fado [the fate] de ser fadista [of being a fado singer]" and there is a part where she says "Fado is madness, is saudade, is uncertainty and it is for sure the most Portuguese of the songs of my country"...and she does it with passion!!! Like if she was Portuguese (I wonder if she knows the real meaning of what she is saying...ouf!!)!! Anyway....

Congratulations!!! From now on Magdi I am officially your fan! :)

Yes you did!

"As you can see I did well to stay here with the people of my homeland"

This was the reaction of Mariza, yesterday evening, during the concert in Lisbon, when she was told that the prize was for the Colombian group "Gaiteiro de San Jacinto" [congratulations! but no videos available on youtube].

12 000 persons sold out the concert and many invitees were on stage for the delightfulness of the audience. One of the most special guests was Carlos do Carmo who sang alone two fados «Canoas do Tejo» and «Lisboa Menina e Moça» and had the first stand up applause of the evening. There were also the participations of Tito Paris (cape-verdean), Filipe Mukenga (angolan) and Ivan Lins (brazilian) in a night Mariza called it "a celebration of lusophony"

By the way, Portuguese language it's spoken by over 210 million people over the world (the 6th most spoken language), mainly in Brazil, Portugal and other old Portuguese colonies and Spanish author Miguel Cervantes once called Portuguese "the sweet language", while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as "the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful"

She also invited the famous Portuguese singer Rui Veloso with who she sang «Transparente», «Jura» e «Não Queiras Saber de Mim» in a "softer" style (more pop) [the video I link here is very good, it is very relaxing ballad...It is not from yesterday´s concert but I believe that the duet was more or less like this; and I really like this song which means "Don´t you wanna know ´bout me/tonight I´m not here/ When sadness "knocks"/ there is no one worse than me....today I don´t recommend myself...lalalalalala.....one day maybe I ll translate because this is not fado! :P]

Congratulations to my dear Mariza! I am looking forward to listen to her new upcoming album!!!
And I just wonder if the Colombians had ever performed on the Walt Disney Concert Hall, where the renowned architect Frank Gehry built a 'Taverna' especially for her. It is just a thought...
:P

Loucura/Madness :The opening of the live concert

Loucura/Madness
Written by Carlos do Carmo

I was made for song (fado),

How do I know I live a poem sung

From a ballad that I wrote

To speak of it,

I cannot do

But let my soul sing out

And souls know how to hear me

Cry out, cry out

Poets of my country

Trunks of the same root

Of life that does unite us

And as for all of you

If you were not beside me

Th ere would be no song

Nor singers such as I

Th at my voice

Is so mournful

Is the fault of all of you

Th e poets in my life

It’s madness

I have heard it said

But blessed is the madness

To sing and to live

Will Mariza win the grammy tonight?
:)

Chuva: reason for the Grammy 3

Chuva/ Rain
written by Jorge Fernando


As coisas vulgares que ha na vida / (The usual things in your life)
Não deixam saudades / (won't make you miss them)

Só as lembranças que doem / (only the hurting memories )
Ou fazem sorrir / (or those which make you smile)
Há gente que fica na historia / (there are some people who stay in history)
da história da gente ( our life's history)
e outras de quem nem o nome ( and other who we don't even remember)
lembramos ouvir / (hearing their names)
São emoções que dão vida / (it are the emotions that bring life)
A saudade que trago (to the "saudade" that i bring in me)
Aquelas que tive contigo /(those i had with you)
e acabei por perder /(and i've just lost)
Há dias que /(There are days that)
marcam a alma e a vida da gente /(that leave marks in your soul and in our life)
e aquele em que tu me /(and the one that you've)
deixaste não posso esquecer /(left me i can not forget)

A chuva molhava-me o rosto /(The rain felt in my face)
Gelado e cansado /(frozen and tired)
As ruas que a cidade tinha /(the streets that the city had)
Já eu percorrera /(i've went along through them)
Ai... meu choro de moca perdida /(ohh... my young lost girl cry)
gritava a cidade /(I screamed to the city)
que o fogo do amor /(that the fire of love)
sob chuva /(under the rain)
há instantes morrera /(died moments ago)

A chuva ouviu e calou /(the rain listenned and silenced)
meu segredo a cidade/(my secret to the city)
E eis que ela bate no vidro (and there she knocks on the window glass)
Trazendo a saudade (bringing with her the "saudade")

Ó gente da minha terra : reason for the Grammy 2

Oh People of my Land

Lyrics by Amália Rodrigues

É meu e vosso este fado (This Fado is both yours and mine)
destino que nos amarra (The destiny that unites us)
por mais que seja negado (No matter how much it is denied)
às cordas de uma guitarra (By the strings of a guitar)

Sempre que se ouve um gemido (Whenever one hears a lament)
duma guitarra a cantar (Of a guitar's song)
fica-se logo perdido (One is instantly lost)
com vontade de chorar (With a longing to weep) [believe it or not it happens exactly this to me! and to all the portuguese that really have the fado soul]

Ó genta da minha terra (Oh people of my land)
agora é que eu percebi (It is now that I have perceived)
esta tristeza que trago (This sadness which I carry)
foi de vós que a recebi (Was from you that I received)

E pareceria ternura (It would seem a kindness)
se eu me deixasse embalar (If I left myself be soothed)
era maior a amargura (The greater the anguish)
menos triste o meu cantar (The less sorrowful my song)

Ó genta da minha terra (Oh people of my land)


Ó genta da minha terra (Oh people of my land)
agora é que eu percebi (It is now that I have perceived)
esta tristeza que trago (This sadness which I carry)
foi de vós que a recebi (Was from you that I received)

This beautiful Fado is a tribute to the portuguese people. It was written by the great Amalia and it is a deep insight of the portuguese soul. You can translate "this sadness which I carry" as a feeling of nostalgia, of saudade that actually makes us long to weep when we hear the guitar and the first lines of this poem; we really know what it means and believe me, it means a lot. And pay attention to the guitar...she says it all about the song!!

And of course, the warm reaction of the Portuguese audience to the interpretation of Mariza... First everybody remains quiet and in silence (in Portugal we say "silence! fado is about to be sang" which shows respect) and then, the emotion grows up in such a way that Mariza starts crying and even turns the back to audience like she couldn´t stand the emotion...and finally everybody applauds loudly for a long time! What an unforgettable moment... I always get the goose bumps and feel very privileged to have such a powerful singer to sing for me, to my heart, to our hearts! She sings about us and she does it astonishingly...

Magnificent!

The Grammy is not enough :P

And here is another video with Mariza´s fado and some pictures I found interesting; It is kind of an "illustration" of the song itself. Hope you like it!

Primavera: reason for the Grammy 1

Primavera / Spring

Lyrics by David Mourão Ferreira

Music by Pedro Rodrigues

All the love that seized us

As if made of wax it was

Was broken and undone

Ah, fatal spring! [funesta Primavera!]

How I wish,

how we wish

To have died that day

And condemned I was

To have weeping living with me

To live, to live, to live, to live

To live and without you

Living and not, however,

Forgetting that enchantment

That day

I lost

The dry bread of solitude

It's the only thing we get

The only thing to be fed on

What matters if the heart

Says yes or says no

If it keeps on living

All the love that seized us

Was broken, was undone

In fear was converted

Let no one speak of spring

How I wish,

how we wish

To have died that day

(...)

Simply outstanding!