Now for some music

I am working on a short article about lyricists within the fado, focusing on people who are writing now. In that spirit, I offer a few fado lyrics that I think are particularly well written (with an mp3 of each one). I am going to do this in two batches. The one contains lyrics written by male authors.

Format for each entry is as follows: Title, Fadista. (Lyricist/Composer, then name of the fado if appropriate). I've also tried a translation--but don't expect anything particularly poetic.

For each track, click on Title for the lyrics and on mp3 for the mp3. All attribution information is taken from José  Fernandes Castro's excellent site, Fados do fado.

Ronda dos bairros (mp3). Tony de Matos. (Francisco dos Santos / Fernando Freitas *fado noquinhas*). Bonus: Lucília do Carmo mp3, recorded under the title of Senhora da Saúde, with lyrics just slightly modified. (tr. "Tour of Lisbon's neighborhoods")

Boa noite solidão (mp3). Fernando Maurício. (Jorge Fernando / António dos Santos *balada do antónio*) Bonus: Jorge Fernando singing his own composition, with Ana Moura on viola and José Manuel Neto on Portuguese guitar (video). (tr. "Good evening loneliness")

Fiz leilão de mim (mp3). Max. (Artur Ribeiro / Maximiano de Sousa). Bonus: Ricardo Ribeiro video. (tr. "I auctioned myself" or maybe "I put myself on sale.")

Meu irmão fora da lei (mp3). Artur Batalha. (Paco Gonzalez). Bonus: video of Batalha. (tr. "My brother who lived outside the law")

Recado de João Dias (mp3). Rodrigo. Bonus video of Rodrigo. ("João Dias' recollection")

Estrela que se apaga (mp3). Fernando Maurício (Jorge Fernando / Jaime Santos *fado alvito*). Bonus: Artur Batalha video. (tr. "The star that goes out").

Hoje morreu um poeta (mp3). Jaime Dias (Rui Manuel / Vital d'Assunção). Bonus: Jaime Dias singing "Guitarra toca baixinho" (Evangelisti / Nicola di Bari / Versão: Francisco José)--lyrics. (tr. "A poet died today.")

É tão bom ser pequenino (mp3). Rodrigo (João Linhares Barbosa / Popular *fado corrido*). (tr. "It is great to be so young.") This particular mote has a long, complicated history. The idea is to use the mote in a novel way. Too hard to explain, so just compare the version by Linhares Barbosa with that of Carlos Conde, here sung by the incomparable Alfredo Marceneiro. Bonus: Augusto Soares singing Linhares Barbosa's version (video). You'll see that the n-th line of the first stanza is used as the last line of the (n+1)-th stanza. So...

{first stanza}

É tão bom ser pequenino

Ter pai, ter mãe, ter avós

Ter esperança no destino

E ter quem goste de nós

{second stanza}

Vem cá José Manuel / Dás-me a graciosa ideia

De Jesus na Galileia / A traquinar num vergel

És morenito de pele / Como foi o Deus menino

Tens o mesmo olhar divinov / Ai que saudades eu tenho

Em não ser do teu tamanho

É tão bom ser pequenino

ET CETERA