A History of Portuguese Fado

Eight years after its original appearance, and despite the limitations to which, from the outset, I myself made a point of drawing attention – starting with the choice of a cautious title, Para Uma Hist6ria do Fado [literally, Towards A History of Fado], rather than the peremptory Hist6ria do Fado [History of Fado] – it cannot, I think, be denied that this text has established itself as a useful reference tool recognized as such both in academic circles and the Fado community, as well as by the general public, in its twin facets as a work of general dissemination about the genre and as a point of departure for specialised reflection and research in this field, taken as a whole, or on specific themes within it.

A winner of the 2006 Fado Research Award of the Amália Rodrigues Foundation for its original Portuguese edition, A History of Portuguese Fado was acknowledged since its publication in 2004 as a fundamental reference in the genre’s bibliography. It offers an accurate, critical and problematizing view of the history of Fado, from its forming processes to the present, portraying a sequence of two centuries of Fado singers and guitar players, composers and poets, but also of musical forms, poetical conventions, performance practices and institutional frameworks, always placed within the general context of the political, economic, social and cultural history of contemporary Portugal.