One of Radio 3's highlights programmes from WOMAD a couple of weeks ago featured the latest star of fado, Carminho, and finally decided me that it was well overdue that I availed myself of some choice records of the genre. Mariza had suggested herself previously but not got me as far as the checkout. And that was much more my fault than it was hers.
Having found this 3 CD set at £5.99, I weighed the ostensible value against the ignominy of admitting to the status of 'beginner'. I only really want 'state of the art', I don't need my record collection to accuse me of 'beginner' status but it didn't take long for my parsimonious side to get the better of the inner snob. And once it arrived and I played it, I found that was exactly right. This is a tremendous bargain and a marvellous collection.
Many genres of music 'all sound the same' to the non-expert. Barber shop quartets, trad jazz, modern jazz, Renaissance polyphony, hip-hop. Whereas to a finely-tuned ear, like I fondly imagine mine to be, the difference between Bach and Handel, between Mozart and Haydn, the various degrees of reggae or glam rock are immediately obvious. I feared that fado might be like that- just so many very similar passionate despiring laments. It isn't like that at all. It would appear that fado covers as wide a range of music as reggae does, where nobody could possibly fail to tell the difference between U-Roy, Mutabaruka, Big Youth, Culture, Sugar Minott, Barry Biggs and Barbados by Typically Tropical.
The first disc here, Classic Fado, goes back to 1958 which one might find disappointing when the wikipedia entry on the subject says its roots go back to at least 1820 but if Amalia Rodrigues' Solidao was recorded in 58 then she does date back to 1939. But it is one of those moments when class just announces itself, at the start of track 13, that one instinctively knows that Maria da Fe was the essential singer of her period. It is a shame there is no lyric sheet to go with this album and my first efforts to find translations on the internet weren't successful but one can't have everything for £5.99 and one does get the general idea from the title and the performance. Fado means 'fate', and thus, often, loss, heartbreak and irretrievable damage. But one would like to know if the more upbeat pieces are on a different theme or just putting a brave face on it in the manner of something like I'm Doin Fine Now by New York City.
Fado Now sadly doesn't have Mariza or Carminho- again that would be too much to expect- but opens with exactly what one wanted from the album, immediately devastating resignation to luxuriate with, Amor Mais Perfeito by Joana Amendoeira, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EPUBsoTF4w. I'm sure glamour has many other manifestations but to express such fatalism with such panache is one of the finest and most uplifting things one can take from any music or literature. For all that the fado is about despair and hopelessness, it is remarkable how much better one can feel for listening to it.
In a collection from a different culture, one hears strange reminders of more familiar music often enough to suggest that jokes, magic tricks and football aren't the only things that don't need language to translate very well when, of course, poetry itself doesn't. R.E.M. did that chord change, or surely that is from a Dusty Springfield record. Ana Moura is probably the other name that has to be mentioned from this disc although there is not a bad track on any of the three. One striking thought is whether any current English singer could quite convince like this music does. Dusty was something out of the ordinary in the 1960's with her wonderful replication of Motown but whatever happened to Duffy when she dared to try to prove she could do a second album. And yet, although fado is still art, dependant on talent and performance, it seems entirely convincing.
Fado Fusion is numbered disc 2 but it acknowledges by its title that it looks to mix fado with other styles and so one could suggest it might have been put third, looking outwards. It was the disc I had the most doubts about at first. I just wanted fado, I don't want to know what Miles Davis would have done with it. I know that all art is fusion, that nobody can deliver anything worthwhile if they only repeat what went before. And so it doesn't matter if this is 'fado' or not- one stops caring- but might suspect that it is really Contemporary Portuguese Music.
Except, if it is, then perhaps I'll see you in Lisbon. If the other discs delivered not only what one wanted and more, then this is a massive bonus. The term 'R'n'B' has been used to designate wildly different popular music in British and American culture. Do Doctor Feelgood really belong in the same division as Rihanna. And so, whether this is fado, by any stretch of the imagination, begs the question.
There are gorgeous love songs, like Morrinha by Dany Silva, in fairly traditional style but the next track- by Lura- insists on reminding me of Portishead, the band rather than the town near Bristol; others make me wonder if night clubs might be a sort of paradise in Portugal that I'm sure they are not in Britain or Ibiza.
In an unlikely borrowing that I don't suppose really comes from The Clash, my favourite on this disc has to be the Lisbon City Rockers feat. Margarida Pinta, Estranha forma da vida. It's a haunting, late night masterpiece, says here from 2004. There is something of George Benson about the guitar. I'm sure I would have readily gone out and bought this record in 2004 if I had known about it.
I don't mind being treated like a beginner if it brings me a collection like this. What a tremendous set it is. If you have any interest at all in any of the above, this is the bargain buy of the year if not the decade.