Angst and Longing in Lisbon
Saudade Forever
My man knows that I’m the kind of strong-ass woman who, from time to time, you have to be really tender with. That’s why the night after we dragged suitcases down hundreds of stairs from where the cab driver left us, and up an apartment staircase so narrow that our suitcases barely fit, and then woke to cruise ship tours blaring on the cobbled streets outside our window, he left and came home with coffees and a bag of pasteis de nata from one of the best cafes in Lisbon. I’d been angry at myself for doing such a poor job of planning our visit, and I wasn’t sure what I was doing in this city except meeting my sister and her husband a few days hence. We were a vagando no lugar (wandering in place,) but I was uncomfortably dejected, perhaps already picking up on the sorrow from the streets themselves.1
But, for godssake, we were in the Alfama, the district known as the originator of fado. The word translates to fate. Fado is a soulful music that embodies saudade, the Portuguese expression of longing. But that’s like trying to say what blues music is. Saudade is a melancholy, a memory of a loss, a mournful call for a sailor at sea, an ache for a relationship that’s not to be. Fado carries intensity through its lyrics of personal and metaphoric stories, and its sorrowful string instruments. If you’ve ever had a bittersweet sense of a place, person, land, or other-than-human, you already know this kind of love mixed with sadness. And these are also working class songs. Besides the poetry of maritime workers, they’re songs of sex workers, port traders, fishwives, bohemians, and those who hang out in taverns. (I know, kin.)
One doesn’t explain fado, it must be felt. There are numerous theories about the origin of fado. Some trace its origins or influences to the medieval "cantigas de amigo" (song of a friend), some suggest some ancient Moorish influence, and others point to the chants of enslaved Africans at sea,2 but none is conclusive. Brazilian musical critic José Ramos Tinhorão said that fado was brought into Portugal by the hands and craft of a mixed-race Brazilian musician called Domingos Caldas Barbosa in the mid 18th century. Often the music is said to date to 1820, but that also relates to written records. Fado possibly evolved and formed, from a mixture of several older musical genres.
Fado is a near religion in Portugal. Madonna lives part-time in Lisbon, and one of the people we met in that city told us that she sings in their fado houses, learning the tradition. I laughed hearing the reference to her beginner status. But this is a place where fado is so essential that when the singer Amália Rodrigues died in 1999, she was so iconic that the Portuguese government declared three days of mourning.
On this day of my longing for an easier travel experience, we thought we’d walk toward the fado museum, then head to the seafood restaurant our hosts had recommended. Both were near the longest waterway of the Iberian peninsula, the Tagus River, which empties into the Atlantic near Lisbon. When we discovered that the museum was closed, neither of us had a clue what to do here, and so we truly wandered, into Bairro Alto, along the narrow alleys of Tram 28, past Se’de Lisboa, out into the spacious Praça do Comércio, and back, walking into a construction zone. We wandered up another set of stairs to get out of the traffic and ran straight into a palace nearly ruined by a 1755 earthquake. On the wall, a photograph of musicians. I could hear the cooks in the kitchen talking and laughing. I stepped into the building and waited until a young man with curly hair and a long apron asked me what I wanted. This, I said, is there room? He showed me a book listing all of the nights that week, full.
I nodded but my body would not move. Richard turned to walk toward the sunlight and our promised lunch.
Wait, the man said, and then he picked up the phone and called someone. A few minutes later we were reserved for that night.
We had accidentally discovered the restaurant and performance house of Casa de Linhares. After wandering looking for street art and an afternoon sesta, we walked down the stairs toward the Casa for our reservation. We were assigned the small back room with barely a dozen tables. A bus full of music lovers from South Carolina had reserved the spacious front restaurant. I thought we might have a couple of young musicians drop by while the larger group received the main act.
We ate a lovely candlelight dinner by the fireplace, and when the musicians came from a little doorway into the dark room, they stood next to us and brought their saudade. Every one of them, magic. Andre’ Baptista. Jorge Fernando. Carina Mateus. And the glorious Fábia Rebordão (see the video below.) Songs in a language I didn’t understand, music that shook our bodies and brought us joy and resignation.
The fado show often has a very predictable structure: guitarrada (just the musicians playing), followed by a number of individual singers, each of whom sings three fados and then leaves the stage. There is usually an intermission (the intervalo) when the dessert and espresso course is served, after which the cycle restarts. I began to cry almost as soon as the bright, acoustic guitars began. There was something about the intimate texture of the room, of the singer’s timeless melodies and gorgeous vocals. But I think too that I was thinking about how much I would like to bring some Americans with me to this place, how it might be useful in this era of hard times and cruel politics to feel the torment and connection to a working class song.
After the coup d'état of 28 May 1926, fado was nearly eliminated when a corporate conservative and nationalist regime took control, and ended improvisation towards a more regimented style. The authoritarian government was overthrown in 1974 in Lisbon, producing major social, economic, territorial, demographic, and political changes, including the return of the freedom-loving fado. The Carnation Revolution got its name from a transformation with almost no shots fired, and instead, when the population took to the streets to celebrate the end of the dictatorship, demonstrators placed carnations in the muzzles of guns and on the soldiers' uniforms.
Once again fado began to happen spontaneously, indoors or outdoors, in gardens, bullfights, retreats, streets and alley, taverns, cafés de camareiras and casas de meia-porta.3 A music of transgression, inclusive of misfits and those at the margins, fado was sensitive to social injustice, taken into prisons, and according to the Museu do Fado, made “interventionist contours on many occasions.” Not so different then from all visceral music that screams against corporate interests, melancholic and restless, beyond cultural status.
Scholar Aubrey Bell defined saudade in his 1912 book In Portugal, as “a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist.” The emotional sound is closely linked for me to the inexhaustible yearning of the Pixies Surfer Rosa or Nirvana’s In Utero, and by that I don’t mean the capacity to whisper in the verses, and then in the chorus blow the doors clean off. These are the songs where we’re drawn to emotion and the grand gesture rather than the common conventions or lyricism of the music itself. They make me recall that angst and longing are cousins, their painful sadnesses and persistent apprehensions located in only slightly different rebellions.
In Lisbon:
Casas de Baixa-Jules & Madelaine
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The podcast I did with my kid.
This is not a mistake to use a pronoun for something. The streets are alive. As are trees, rocks, mountains, animals and many other living things, and noting them as they/her/him denotes their importance and relationship to me.
Lisbon is also known for its connections to the Atlantic slave trade, which began in 1444, when Portuguese traders brought the first large number of enslaved people from Africa to Europe. We learned a little about this in Portugal, I hoped to learn more on a tour but we didn’t find this available.
Translated as maid-cafes and half-door houses, the places of the people.
June is a very special month in Alfama, when the Santos Populares takes place - festivities in honor of Saint Anthony, the matchmaker and patron saint of Lisbon. During the month of June, the streets of Alfama are full of barbecued sardines, visitors and locals, and all kinds of music, and according to one of our hosts, this scene “invites you to live this month with joy and animation.” If you’re sensitive to noise, this isn’t the easiest time to be in this area.
A wonderfully researched piece, Sonya. I also love those serendipitous discoveries - when we literally stumble into magic. Thanks for introducing me to the world of fado! I learned a similar history studying various types of theatre and just how much these forms of art weave through various stages in a culture's development - and reveal something about a place that one can't simply read about. One has to feel.
Im reminded of your experience inSpain? when you talked or perhaps just exuded such intention you were irresistible in getting a table at a famous amouse bouche restaurant.
Lovely evocation of fado, music matching your soul.