In the 1950s, the regime’s approach to the international success of Amália Rodrigues strengthened the collage of the regime to fado, after changing it deeply.

The simplicity of Fado’s melodic structure values the voice interpretation, and also sublimes the sung repertoires. With a strong evocative inclination, fado’s poetry appeals to the communion between the interpreter, the musicians and the listeners. In quatrains or improvised quatrains, five-verse stanzas, six-verse stanzas, decasyllables and alexandrine verses, this popular poetry evokes themes related to love, luck, individual fate, and the city’s daily narrative. Sensitive to social injustice, Fado gained interventionist contours on many occasions.

And although the first Fado lyrics were mostly anonymous, successively transmitted by oral tradition, this would definitely be reverted in the mid-1920s, when several popular poets emerged, such as Henrique Rego, João da Mata, Gabriel de Oliveira, Frederico de Brito, Carlos Conde and João Linhares Barbosa, who gave special attention to fado. In the 1950s, fado would definitely cross the path of erudite poetry in the voice of Amália Rodrigues. After the decisive contribution of the composer Alain Oulman, fado began singing texts of poets with academic education and published literary works, such as David Mourão-Ferreira, Pedro Homem de Mello, José Régio, Luiz de Macedo, and later Alexandre O’Neill, Sidónio Muralha, Leonel Neves and Vasco de Lima Couto, among many others.

The international divulgation of Fado had begun in the mid-1930s. Fado spread towards the African continent and Brazil, preferred performing destinations of some artists such as Ercília Costa, Berta Cardoso, Madalena de Melo, Armando Augusto Freire, Martinho d’Assunção and João da Mata, among others. However, the internationalization of fado would only consolidate in the 1950s, especially thanks to Amália Rodrigues.

Surpassing the cultural and language barriers, Fado would definitely become a national culture icon with Amália. For decades and until her death, in 1999, Amália Rodrigues was its national and international star.

Reversing its initial critical distance towards fado, and especially since the 1950s, the Estado Novo would tend to promote the most mediatic artistic expressions which seemed compatible with this posture of social resignation, acritical and apolitical, and incorporated fado in its propaganda strategy, gradually transforming it into “national song”, after “a quarter of a century” of depuration through censorship.

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Fado Museum

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