A blog about things happening now in the fado of Lisbon.
Nota: faça um clique no botão de Google Translate (à direita) para aceder uma versão deste site em português.
11 August 2010
Some recent interviews on Rádio Amália
Inga Oliveira at 92.0 (Rádio Amália) has been running some very informative interviews lately with fadistas. The program is called "Estrela da tarde" ("Star of the afternoon") and in addition to interviews there are live in-studio performances. Over the last couple of days I have been doing alot of driving, and so had a chance to catch up on a few of the programs via its podcasts.
Dulce Pontes. I was a little bit surprised when I saw her listed as a guest. I am not hugely familiar with her repertory, but always had the impression that she was not a traditional fado singer. But as the interview unfolded it became pretty clear that she has been connected to the fado for a long time. She told the story of meeting Amália at Amália's house (I presume the famous one in Lisbon), and staying until the wee hours of the morning talking and drinking tea. The story of her early relationship with Amália revolved around her performance of the song "Lagrima" ("Tear"--the kind you cry), which Pontes recorded early in her career (listen below) and which Amália had recorded much earlier. (This part of the conversation starts around 2:55 into the interview, when she says "The person who gave me the desire to sing fado was Amália"). Evidently (4:18) Pontes did not contact Amália about recording "Lagrima", but Amália noticed the performance and (it seems) invited her for a visit. Pontes did not go into alot of detail about the conversation that went on that night, which is too bad!
Pontes goes on to talk about the innovations that Amália brought into the fado (others might call some of these innovations degradations), which included new poems, composers (and I would say also instrumentation and orchestration). Indeed, if you listen to some of the later work from Pontes, you'll hear plenty of music that sounds related to fado, but that is also related to other musics. The point made in one of the other podcasts, by José Gonçalez (who was there with António Pinto Basto). But more on this in the next post.
I am happy to have found this fado blog. Though I can read a little Portuguese and follow some Portuguese blogs, English is far more comfortable, and I will return here and hope you will continue to write about the fado. About Dulce Pontes, I personally don’t see her as a traditional fadista as she sings other kinds of music as well and her way of interpreting the fado is quite different from that of other female singers now and in the past. Perhaps influenced by dramatic French chançon or even opera ... But no doubt she is a skilful singer. The song Lágrima was, as you say, sung by Amália. It is a real classic but strangely enough not very old. The song, composed by her guitar player Carlos Gonçalves with Amália's own words, was presented in 1983. Saudades da Suécia, Ulf
I am happy to have found this fado blog. Though I can read a little Portuguese and follow some Portuguese blogs, English is far more comfortable, and I will return here and hope you will continue to write about the fado.
ReplyDeleteAbout Dulce Pontes, I personally don’t see her as a traditional fadista as she sings other kinds of music as well and her way of interpreting the fado is quite different from that of other female singers now and in the past. Perhaps influenced by dramatic French chançon or even opera ... But no doubt she is a skilful singer. The song Lágrima was, as you say, sung by Amália. It is a real classic but strangely enough not very old. The song, composed by her guitar player Carlos Gonçalves with Amália's own words, was presented in 1983.
Saudades da Suécia,
Ulf
Thanks for the post, and for being the first to post one here! I will definitely be keeping this going for the foreseeable future.
ReplyDelete