Wouldn't our tax dollars be better spent educating our children rather than teaching them to pass a yearly exam? School buildings that are well maintained and comfortable. Improved salaries and benefits for teachers so that the best and brightest are recruited. Music classes, art classes, etc..

Fado (Portuguese:destiny, fate) music is the heart of the Portuguese soul. It is arguably the oldest urban folk music in the world.  Portugal, since the moment of its birth, emerged in a crossroad of cultures. This makes difficult to point out a precise origin of Fado, but all scholars agree that its origins go back many centuries, maybe even to times before the existence of Portugal as an independent country.

One possibility puts the birth of Fado back to the middle ages, to the time of the minstrels and the jesters. Already in that time one could find the characteristics that even today it conserves. For example, "cantigas de amigo" (friend songs), that were love songs for a woman, have great similarities with diverse subjects of the Fado of Lisbon. The love songs, that were sung by a man to a woman, seem to find kinship in the Fado of Coimbra, where the students intone their songs beneath the window of the loved one (serenades). We still have, in the same time, satire songs, or of disdain that are still today frequent themes for Fado, in social and political critics.

In popular belief, fado is a form of music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor. However, in reality fado is simply a form of song which can be about anything, but must follow a certain structure.,But fado only appeared after 1820 in Lisbon, at that time only fado marinheiro (sailor fado) was known and was sung, like the cantigas de levantar ferro, only by sailors. Fado was not known in the rest of the country, not even in the Algarve, and it was not known in the south of Spain where the Arab influence stood until the end of the 15th century. Until the beginning of the 19th century there was no written record of fado.

The Fado is usually linked to the Portuguese word saudade which means to miss or to long for someone or something. Whatever its origins its themes have remained constant: destiny, betrayal in love, death and despair. A typical lyric goes: “Why did you leave me, where did you go? I walk the streets looking at every place we were together, except you’re not there.” It’s a sad music and a fado performance is not successful if an audience is not moved to tears.

Since Fado is the blues music of my ancestors (yes, I'm Portuguese), I became interested in listening and playing Fado. I have a new Fado page where I will be posting sheet music and midi files for other people interested in Fado