Tamesis an imprint of Boydell & Brewer

Chapter Title: Fado, História d’uma Cantadeira: Construction and Deconstruction of the
fado novo

Book Title: Fado and the Urban Poor in Portuguese Cinema of the 1930s and 1940s
Book Author(s): MICHAEL COLVIN
Published by: Boydell & Brewer; Tamesis an imprint of Boydell & Brewer

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt18gzfd4.9

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 5

Fado, História d’uma Cantadeira:

Construction and Deconstruction of the fado novo

Because of Portugal’s neutral status during the Second World War, Lisbon
attracted European exiles and American soldiers; the capital and its Estoril
coast welcomed deserters, sailors, spies, and toppled monarchs. In this privileged
Lisbon of the early to mid-1940s – politically distant from the compromised
Continent – the fado novo would be heard for the first time, en masse, by inter-
national audiences.
However, well before the Second World War, the Lisbon fado had been
criticized by Portuguese writers, who often pointed to the poor, urban origins
of the song to prove its local rather than universal or national appeal. António
Arroio (1909) associates the fado’s poverty in harmony and theme with the
poverty in which the song was born:

O Fado, o nome diz, nasceu nos centros de maior abominação; a maneira

de o cantar é o conjunto mais completo e ridículo dos erros estilísticos,
de faltas de bom gôsto. Mas também só assim tem côr própria, local;
modificado ou estilizado diversamente, perde todo o valor e fica reduzido à
sua eterna e pobre harmonia, sempre a mesma, sempre docemente sensual
e deprimente.1

[The fado, the name tells us, was born in the centers of greatest abomination;
the manner in which it is sung is the combination of the most complete and
ridiculous of stylistic errors and bad taste. Nevertheless, that is the only
reason it has its own, local color; modified or arranged differently, it loses
all of its value and is reduced to its eternal and poor harmony, always the
same, always sweetly sensual and depressing.]

At the end of this classist tirade, Arroio states his thesis: “Para que pois cantá-lo,
quando tantas riquezas de ordem superior abriga o cancioneiro nacional?” [Why

1 Arroio, p. 220.

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106 FADO AND THE URBAN POOR IN PORTUGUESE CINEMA

then sing it, when so many other treasures of superior order are hidden in the
national songbook?]2
In 1936, Luís Moita recognizes the popularity of the fado, and comments on
the impressions it gave foreigners when the song:

Saiu surrateiramente, das vielas de Lisboa, dos postes de rádio da Capital ou

dos seus ‘caldos de cultura’ e foi surpreendê-los galgando a fronteira, com
doridos vómitos, catitas e empoladas estrofes.3

[Sneaked out of the alleys of Lisbon, from the capital’s radio stations or from
their “melting pots” and took them by surprise by jumping the border with
painful vomiting, precious and pompous stanzas.]

Nevertheless, Moita’s “canção de vencidos” [song of the vanquished], which

had already become the “triste canção do sul” [sad song of the South] and,
shortly thereafter, the “canção do sul” [song of the South], would become
Portugal’s “canção nacional” [national song] exported to a non-Lusophone
public.4 No longer was the fado novo the monotonous lament of poor vagrants;
rather, it had become a lighter song appreciated by all classes in all regions of
the nation.5 The fado had fled the degraded popular neighborhoods of Mouraria
and Alfama to accompany musical theater, to dominate national radio, and to
become the soundtrack to Portuguese cinema of the 1930s and 1940s.
Yet the fado novo’s social, cultural, and geographical mobility faced criticism
as fadistófilos questioned the song’s relationship to its nineteenth-century
heritage, associated with Lisbon’s ruffians and prostitutes. As the once mar-

2 Ibid., p. 220.
3 Moita, p. 188. Well before the Second World War, the Lisbon fado had been heard and
criticized by foreigners who had visited the capital. Moita cites several international reactions
to the fado prior to 1936, and characterizes foreign criticism of the fado. Sucena, p. 126, remarks
that, in the 1920s and 1930s, some foreigners visited the Solar de Alegria, but that at that time:
“[Nos] locais onde se cantava o fado, predominavam os apreciadores e entendedores que não
deixavam servir-lhes gato por lebre” [(In the) places where they sang fado, there were mostly
fans and connoisseurs who did not let anyone pull the wool over their eyes].
4 In 1936, Moita coined the phrase “canção de vencidos” to describe the fado as plangent
and nostalgic, thus returning us to the hyperbolic account of King Sebastian’s defeat at Al-
cácer-Quibir. In 1903, Pimentel had written A Triste Canção do Sul, complemented by his As
Alegres Canções do Norte (1905). The fado magazine A Canção do Sul (1923) borrowed Pimentel’s
descriptive title. By 1904, Dantas, Pimentel, and Pinto de Carvalho had considered the fado’s
role as the national song.
5 The fado’s status as national song was challenged during the first four decades of the
twentieth century by Arroio (1909), Lopes Vieira (1929), and Moita (1936). Avelino de Sousa,
O Fado e os seus Censores (Lisbon: n.p., 1912), defends the fado’s role as national song by arguing
its appeal to all classes.

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 FADO, HISTÓRIA D’UMA CANTADEIRA 107

ginalized song pervaded all strata of Portuguese society, it became lighter and
musically richer: no longer characteristic of the plaints of an impoverished
urban class. Sucena remarks: “Por 1930 o fado antigo (em que predominara a
quadra improvisada e depois a quadra glosada ao sabor da inspiração dos
cantadores) estava a chegar ao fim.” [Around 1930 the old fado (dominated by
the improvised stanza and then commented on in the style of the individual
singer’s inspiration) was coming to an end.]6 The fado seemingly had buried
its roots. It was no longer the musical outcast; rather, it had become the standard
of Portuguese folklore.
Perdigão Queiroga’s film Fado, História d’uma Cantadeira (1947) narrates
the genesis of the fado novo – from the professionalization of the fadista to the
internationalization of the artist – and presents its evolution as detrimental to
the tradition of the nineteenth-century fado.7 The movie’s Hollywood-esque
rags-to-riches-to-rags plot, in which love conquers the temptations of money
and fame, disguises the film’s more important and critical subtext in relation to
the history of the fado. In Perdigão Queiroga’s tale, the fado castiço of the urban
working class triumphs over the fado canção of the bourgeoisie, by returning
to and rejecting the fado vadio of the nineteenth-century rufias [ruffians]. The
film proposes stagnancy at a moment prior to the institutionalization of fadistice
[fado singing] as a profession, yet posterior to the shunned fado choradinho of
Lisbon’s fadista class. Perdigão Queiroga’s critical proposal recognizes the fado
novo’s evolution from bawdy urban expression to national song. By repelling
foreign influences on the fado – particularly samba, flamenco, and Hollywood
soundtracks – and by leaving the fado batido [a percussive fado] in the nineteenth
century, the movie presents a fado belonging to the working class of Lisbon’s
popular neighborhoods.
Whereas the action of the film takes place over a period of several months
in the late 1940s, the narrative deliberately presents a series of anachronisms
that signal key periods in the history of the fado. As the ascent of Ana Maria
(Amália Rodrigues) to international stardom reflects the diachronic evolution
of the fado novo in the twentieth century, so the reticence of Júlio Guitarrista
(Virgílio Teixeira) toward the professionalization and consequent internation-
alization of the novo-fadista signals an anti-social regression to the early
nineteenth century, and threatens a return to the fado’s precursors in the
eighteenth, as a means to preserve Lisbon’s song.

6 Sucena, p. 213.
7 Pais de Brito, p. 145. The schism reflects the 1923 ideological divide between singers that
resulted in the establishment of two professional unions: the Grémio Artístico do Fado, who
hoped to elevate the fado by singing exclusively in salons; and the Grupo Solidariedade Propaganda
do Fado, who argued that the song be sung only in taverns.

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108 FADO AND THE URBAN POOR IN PORTUGUESE CINEMA

The film appears to follow the trajectory of Amália Rodrigues’s career, and
thus seems contemporary to its release date in 1947; yet the narrative’s anach-
ronisms allow us to conclude that the film must be an allegory of the genesis
and evolution of the fado novo.8 However, in order to understand such narrative
progression/regression, we must examine the plot as two storylines that depart
from the same axis, move in opposite chronological directions, and, finally,
intersect in the same spot where they started. I propose that the film follows
two chronologies that are contrary to each other, yet exist in parallel succession.
The suggested narrative spans the first half of the twentieth century, while
referring to the second half of the nineteenth, after Maria Severa’s death in
1846. It returns us to the fado batido of a Lisbon on the heels of the return of
Dom João VI’s court, and even alludes to the conjectured African origins of
the fado, in the late eighteenth century.9 Ana Maria’s chronology progresses to
the late 1940s’ exportation of the fado novo, whereas Júlio’s regresses to the
fado’s questionable Afro-Brazilian roots in the lundum.10 The film’s ending,

8 Bénard da Costa, p. 84, argues that the plot of Fado was loosely based on a mythic biopic
of Amália’s life, from her poor roots to international fame. In Pavão dos Santos, p. 81, Amália
Rodrigues comments on the biographical affinities between herself and Ana Maria.
9 Vieira Nery, pp. 59–60, does not believe that the return of the Royal Family from Rio de
Janeiro in 1821 played a crucial role in the diffusion of the fado among the poor urban classes.
Rather, he argues that the servants, slaves, sailors, and soldiers who accompanied the returning
court were in the social position to introduce the fado in Lisbon’s popular settings.
10 Moita and, much later, José Ramos Tinhorão, Fado: Dança do Brasil, Cantar de Lisboa
(Lisbon, Caminho, 1994), argue that the fado derived from modinhas and lunduns. However, we
must consider the former’s campaign to denationalize the fado by associating it with Afro-Bra-
zilian music; and the latter’s desire to credit Brazilian court society, prior to and during D. João
VI’s flight to Rio de Janeiro, as the mainstay of twentieth-century Portuguese folklore. Moita’s
and Tinhorão’s views on the provenance of the fado reflect popular beliefs. In Teresa Castro
d’Aire, O Fado (Lisbon: Temas da Actualidade, 1996), p. 39, the fadista Odete Mendes comments:
“Desde criança eu oiço dizer que o fado veio do Brasil. Dizem que foram os escravos que o
levaram de África para o Brasil e depois veio nas caravelas trazido pelos marinheiros para a
Mouraria.” [Since I was a child I have heard that the fado came from Brazil. They say it was the
slaves who brought it from Africa to Brazil, and then it came on the caravels brought by the
sailors to the Mouraria.] However, when Ramos Tinhorão presented his arguments in Lisbon in
1994, some fadistas were not convinced of the fado’s Afro-Brazilian ancestry. João Braga
comments: “Um senhor chamado Ramos Tinhorão […] veio do Brasil para nos dizer que o Fado
nasceu lá em 1830, o que é, evidentemente, um disparate” [A man named Ramos Tinhorão […]
came from Brazil to tell us that the Fado was born over there in 1830, which is, evidently, nonsense]
(Castro d’Aire, p. 65). Carlos do Carmo remarks: “[Tinhorão] veio aqui a Lisboa apresentar um
livro que practicamente dá como seguro que o Fado terá nascido no Brasil e terá sido dançado
[…] Pelo menos até hoje, não me parece que se possa afirmar nada de categórico sobre as origens
do Fado. Fica sempre este mistério, o que lhe dá também um certo fascínio, penso eu” [(Tinhorão)
came here to Lisbon to present a book that practically asserts that the fado was born in Brazil
and was danced (…) At least up until now, it does not seem to me that we can affirm anything
categorically about the origins of the Fado. There will always be this mystery, it is also that what
gives it a certain air of fascination, I think] (ibid, pp. 119–20).

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 FADO, HISTÓRIA D’UMA CANTADEIRA 109

however, signals a return to the sad fado menor in Alfama, prior to the inter-
nationalization of the artist. The fadista and the guitarrista meet up in the
popular tavern, thus recognizing the caprice of their odyssey, as Ana Maria
sings: “Bom seria/ Poder um dia/ Trocar-te o fado/ Por outro fado qualquer” [It
would be great/ One day to be able to/ Trade your own fate (fado)/ For any other
fate (fado) in the world].11 And the lyrics render the lovers unable to alter their
fate: “A gente já traz o fado marcado” [Our fate is already determined].
The first scene at the tavern of Joaquim Marujo (Vasco Santana), in which
Ana Maria sings “O Fado de Cada Um,” is the matrix of our chronologies.
Because this fado is repeated during crucial moments throughout the film and
appears at the end, when Ana Maria and Júlio Guitarrista reunite, its relevance
to the movie’s plot is evident. The lyrics of the song presage the contrary direction
of the protagonists in their exploitation of the term “fado” as both musical genre
and fate: “Bem pensado/ Todos temos o nosso fado/ E quem nasce malfadado/
Melhor fado não terá” [After all/ We all have our fates (fados)/ And whoever is
born under a bad star/ Will never have a better fate (fado)].12 Ana Maria’s fado
menor becomes so distorted into fado canção that it is confused with opera, and
finally it becomes flamenco. Júlio abandons the guitarra, not to practice the fado
batido; rather, he escapes to the drunken indolence of the fado vadio. And while
Ana Maria and Júlio appear to have different fates (fados) – hers as an interna-
tional star and his as a rufia – they share their destiny in the final scene, in which
Júlio recovers his Portuguese guitar and Ana Maria her ability to sing the menor:
“Fado é sorte/ E do berço até à morte/ Ninguém foge por mais forte/ Ao destino
que Deus dá” [Fado is luck/ And from birth to death/ No matter how strong you
are you cannot flee/ The destiny that God has given you].
In the first tavern scene, the character of Chico Fadista (António Silva) draws
our attention to the relevance of the “Fado de Cada Um.” He declares: “A Maria
do Rosário morreu mas não morreu de tudo” [Maria do Rosário died, but she’s
still with us]. Although we understand that Chico refers to Ana Maria’s mother,
who was a famous fadista in Alfama, we must not ignore the covert allusions to
Maria Severa who sang at the Rosária dos Óculos tavern in the Mouraria, and,
therefore, was Maria da Rosária. When Ana Maria puts flowers on her mother’s
grave, the tombstone reveals that Maria do Rosário died in 1931, the same year

11 Silva Tavares/Frederico de Freitas, “Fado de Cada Um.”

12 For more on the definition of fado as fate, see Barreto, and Maria Luísa Guerra, Fado:
Alma de um Povo (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional–Casa da Moeda, 2003). Pimentel, p. 43, explains
that the term fado, as a musical genre, did not derive directly from the Latin fatum (fate); rather,
it came from the slang term fadista: “pessoa que cumpre um mau destino; seja homem ou mulher,
prostituta ou rufião.” He bases his speculation on the appearance of the word fadista to describe
a social class in the Mysterios do Limoeiro (1849) prior to any evidence of the existence of the
words “fado” or “fadinho” to describe the popular song.

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110 FADO AND THE URBAN POOR IN PORTUGUESE CINEMA

that Leitão de Barros’s A Severa debuted and, consequently, that the fado novo
was born.13 Furthermore, the photo of Amália Rodrigues – hanging on the wall
behind Chico – dressed as Maria do Rosário, in a black dress with a white lace
shawl on her head, reminds us of the nineteenth-century fadista. Maria do Rosário
represents a figure lodged somewhere between sin and piety, characteristic of
the twentieth-century vision of the nineteenth-century fadista.
Chico Fadista announces that the fado that died with Maria Severa is being
reborn in the fado novo. Nevertheless, the nineteenth-century fado died, and
therefore the fado novo of the 1930s signals an abortive rebirth of the song.
Chico Fadista’s introduction of Ana Maria to the audience, thus, is prescriptive.
Ana Maria’s fado is not Maria do Rosário’s fado, just as Amália Rodrigues’s
fado novo is not Maria Severa’s fado batido.14 By presenting the two trends in
the fado, spanning a period of over one hundred years, Chico Fadista’s speech
establishes the relevance of the fados alluded to in the “Fado de Cada Um” as
he foreshadows the two different paths that our protagonists will take in order
to understand the evolution of the fado novo, only to return to the same point
of departure at the end of the film.
Chico Fadista’s character, therefore, marks the historical significance of the
starting and ending points in our film’s chronology. Chico facilitates Ana Maria’s
transfer from the crumbling, working-class Alfama neighborhood to a cosmo-
politan Lisbon. He is a middleman between the artist and his/her art. He represents
a new trend in the fado, contemporary to the 1927 Decreto-Lei 13 725, that
required that agents contract artists; that there be a compulsory inspection and
approval of the artist’s repertoire; and that singers and musicians carry a carteira
profissional [professional license].15 Chico’s character is comical in his calculating
avarice and exaggerated underhandedness. He reveals accidentally his lucrative
goal to translate Ana Maria’s musical notes into banknotes, as he seduces the

13 I attribute the birth of the fado novo to the reincarnation of Maria Severa in Dina Teresa
Moreira’s portrayal of the Mouraria fadista in Leitão de Barros’s A Severa. Manuel Halpern, O
Futuro da Saudade: O Novo Fado e os Novos Fadistas (Lisbon: Dom Quixote, 2004), classifies
the generation of young fadistas of the 1990s and 2000s as “novos fadistas.” However, Rui Vieira
Nery, p. 14, cautions: “O fado de Maria Severa, nos alvores da década de 1840, era por certo um
‘novo Fado,’ relativamente à dança cantada dos terreiros e salões do Rio de Janeiro.” [The fado
of Maria Severa, at the dawn of the 1840s, was certainly a “new fado,” in relation to the dance
that was sung on the docks and in the noble salons of Rio de Janeiro.]
14 In Pavão dos Santos, p. 115, Amália speaks about her role as Severa in the 1955 production
of Dantas’s play at the Teatro Nacional.
15 Vieira Nery, p. 188, attributes the professionalization of the fadista to Decreto-Lei 9761,
of June 4, 1924, which proposed compulsory licenses for dramatic artists. The law distinguished
between licenses for actors, songwriters, and singers. Decreto-Lei 13 564, of May 6, 1927,
authorized licenses for public venues where fado was sung; censored programs of indecorous
themes; and imposed professional licenses on singers. For more on Decreto-Lei no. 13 725 of
June 3, 1927, see Sucena, p. 213.

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 FADO, HISTÓRIA D’UMA CANTADEIRA 111

young fadista with the promise of fame: “o público, os aplausos […] os dez
por-cento” [the audience, the applause (…) the ten percent]. Whereas Chico is
not the obvious villain of our story, Ana Maria and Júlio Guitarrista certainly
observe him with caution. He is the progressive Lisbon of Avenida da Liberdade
that encroaches on the village-like atmosphere of Alfama, threatening the latter’s
quaint innocence with the ebullient worldliness of the former.
The initiation of Decreto-Lei 13 725 and the consequent professionalization
of the fadista and the musician coincide with the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa’s
(CML) first plans to shake Lisbon’s image as Portugal’s “cidade abandonada e
suja” [dirty, abandoned city].16 The urbanization of the neighborhoods to the
west of Alcântara, the new design of the Parque Eduardo VII and Avenida da
Liberdade, and the widening of Rua da Palma into Avenida de Almirante Reis
prompted the demolition of the Mouraria and Alfama in the name of hygiene
and progress. The fado houses of Alfama and the Mouraria were closing rapidly
between 1926 and 1940 and moving westward to Bairro Alto, Praça da Alegria,
and Avenida da Liberdade.17 The professionalization of the fado promoted the
decency of the new venues by shunning the appearance of prostitution and
vagrancy long associated with the fado in the taverns and bordellos of the
popular neighborhoods.
Chico’s removing Ana Maria from Alfama signals the CML’s taking the fado
out of the Mouraria and Alfama; it is the transplanting of that quaint fadista
Mouraria and Alfama to the new, cleaner capital. When Júlio and Ana Maria
return home from her debut at the tavern, just after her first contract negotiation
with Chico Fadista, we spy in the background an American sailor as he peeks
in and out of the doorways of the neighborhood, searching unsuccessfully for
the prostitutes of an extinct Alfama.
The wholesale sanitization of Alfama as the quintessential folkloric Lisbon
neighborhood is evident in the chatter of the producers and critics (Reginaldo
Duarte and José Zenóglio) as they consider how they will market Ana Maria’s
image. The producer Sousa Morais (Tony D’Algy) suggests: “O cenário típico
com muito sabor à Alfama. Depois já veremos.” [Typical scenery with an Alfama
flavor. You’ll see.] They will take Alfama out of Alfama, yet they will preserve
it as folklore. When the new star appears on stage, symbolically singing “Fado,
Não Sei Quem És” [Fado, I Don’t Know Who You Are] she steps out of a giant
Portuguese guitar lodged in a theatrical recreation of Alfama: a cardboard re-
construction of the convergence of the Escadinhas de Santo Estêvão with Rua

16 José-Augusto França, Lisboa: Urbanismo e Arquitectura (Lisbon: Instituto de Cultura

e Língua Portuguesa, 1980), p. 98, refers to magazine descriptions of the city in the 1920s.
17 Sucena, pp. 126–32, tracks the opening of fado houses in Bairro Alto, Parque Mayer, and
Praça da Alegria in the wake of the demolition of the Mouraria.

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112 FADO AND THE URBAN POOR IN PORTUGUESE CINEMA

dos Remédios.18 The stage set signals the artificial folklorization of that Alfama/
Mouraria that must yield to progress: Alfamas and Mourarias destroyed and
reborn, caricatured in the fado novo. The modernization of Lisbon will take
the fado with it and leave behind the fado novo and synthetic reproductions of
a picturesque, fadista Alfama, suitable for a tourist’s tastes.19 In such a context,
the last strophe of Ana Maria’s fado is more poignant: “Meu sonho/ Quero
acordar/ Volver/ De novo ao fado e sofrer/ Porque sofrer é viver/ E eu vivo e
sofro a cantar” [My dream/ I want to wake up/ Go back to my fate (fado) and
suffer/ Because life is suffering/ And I live and suffer as I sing]. As Ana Maria’s
fado novo is bastardized for mass audiences, Alfama traditions are threatened
by the impending aesthetics of folklore.
Gabriela Cruz alludes to the role of film, particularly this scene, in shaping
the way that audience views folklore:

The scene is more than an allegory of history; it delineates a new listening

practice for the genre […] the viewer floats wherever the camera takes him
or her and perceives fado as belonging to the realm of the extraordinary. The
eye of the viewer and the eye of the camera: these are two of the trinity of
imaginary objects that define the new regime of perception crafted for the
genre in the film.20

The fado’s primacy in national folklore dates to the 1890s, when the song began
to accompany light Portuguese theater.21 The apogee of the musical review and
musical comedy films in the 1930s and 1940s coincided with the opening of
Lisbon’s first nightclubs and the debut of neon signs on Avenida da Liberdade
and Praça da Alegria/Parque Mayer.22 The primitive tableaux of the cegadas

18 Silva Tavares/Frederico de Freitas, “Fado, Não Sei Quem És.”

19 Zé Manel’s cartoon in Parada da Paródia (November 16, 1961) addresses the fado novo’s
sanitization of both the tasca and the milieu of the fadista. A group of well-dressed English
tourists arrive at the doorway of the Tasca do Zé where three drunkards are standing. The young
man among the group of tourists explains: “Não se atrapalhem! Tem mau aspecto, mas é a casa
de fados mais típica que eu conheço.” [Don’t be put off! The place is not charming, but it is the
most typical fado house I know.] In 1974, Osório, p. 118, comments: “A Alfama e a Mouraria
estão longe de ser o que foram, ‘bastiões de fado’ e da fadistagem a sério (são hoje bastiões do
turismo e dos seus restaurantes típicos).” [Alfama and Mouraria are far from what they were,
“bastions of fado” and serious fadistagem (today they are bastions of tourism and its typical
restaurants).] Osório’s observation still applies to Alfama, but not to Mouraria which is inhos-
pitable to mass tourism.
20 Cruz, p. 194.
21 The fado and the caricature of the fadista had appeared in the Portuguese musicals Ditoso
Fado (1869) and Triste Fado (1872). In 1873, João Maria dos Anjos and an array of musicians
and fadistas gave a concert at the Casino Lisbonense.
22 França, Lisboa, p. 98.

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 FADO, HISTÓRIA D’UMA CANTADEIRA 113

of the 1920s ceded to the pre-Second World War musicals that featured Lisbon’s
most celebrated fadistas: Maria Albertina, Maria Alice, Berta Cardoso, and
Hermínia Silva. The revista portuguesa breathed new life into the fado by
elevating its status. The audience was no longer looking down on the despicable
fadista – resident of the slums of Mouraria, Alfama, and Madragoa; rather, it
looked up to stars who were fadistas playing the roles of such fadistas. Lisboners
were comfortable knowing that at the performance’s end, the fadista would
cease to be the risqué Ermelinda Peixeira, the tragic Rosa Enjeitada, or the
pathetic Maria Severa. When Chico contracts Ana Maria to sing in musical
theater, he manifests the definitive break between the nineteenth- and twenti-
eth-century fadistas: the promotion of the novo-fadista as an actor who plays
the role of the folkloric nineteenth- or early twentieth-century fadista.23
If we interpret Fado as a simple love story, we may understand Chico’s
launching Ana Maria into musical theater as a wedge between her and Júlio.
Chico’s plans for Ana Maria relegate Júlio to the periphery of her stardom;
eventually, they exclude him. Júlio appears jealous, and Ana Maria solicitous
to his pride. In fact, when she tries to convince Júlio that her professional
license will make them both happy, he retorts resentfully: “A nossa felicidade
não tem nada que ver com isto.” [Our happiness doesn’t have anything to do
with all this.]
But is Perdigão Queiroga’s leading man so one-dimensional? I propose that
Júlio Guitarrista represents the fado’s tradition in the face of modernity. While
he appears conflicted, jealous of Ana Maria’s stardom and suspicious of Chico
Fadista’s and Sousa Morais’s designs on the singer, really he is advocating for the
preservation of the nineteenth-century fado despite its inevitable demise in the
fado novo. In the scenes preceding Ana Maria’s debut, Perdigão Queiroga cements
Júlio’s characterization as Ana Maria’s supportive lover. Júlio defends Ana Maria’s
right to sing in pubs when his father (José Víctor) protests. Júlio rehearses with
Ana Maria and teaches her to sing the fado castiço. Furthermore, it is Júlio who
convinces Ana Maria to honor her contract, when she vows never to sing again
after having maimed Júlio’s daughter (?), Luisinha (Aida Queiroga), by throwing
her in the way of a runaway barrel of wine.24 “A culpada foi eu” [I’m the guilty
one], insists Ana Maria: “eu e a minha vaidade do fado. É a sina que Deus me
deu. Mas acabou-se. Eu nunca mais canto” [me and my vain fado. It’s the fate
that God gave me. But that’s all over now. I’ll never sing again.]

23 Vieira Nery, p. 180, signals Júlia Mendes and Maria Vitória as the first fadistas to work
as stage actresses during a period when only professional actors appeared in the revista.
24 Luisinha’s relationship to Júlio is unclear. The girl lives with Júlio’s mother, Mãe Rosa
(Emília Villas), yet she appears to be the surrogate daughter of Ana Maria and Júlio. In the first
scene of the film, the characters behave as a traditional nuclear family and thus confound
Luisinha’s origins.

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114 FADO AND THE URBAN POOR IN PORTUGUESE CINEMA

Nevertheless, in these episodes Júlio’s role as the old guard of the nine-
teenth-century fado, recalcitrant to the bourgeois fado novo, manifests in his
relationship to his props, to Ana Maria, and to the resigned conviction with
which he delivers his lines. As his father criticizes the fado’s coming out of the
seedy underground of Lisbon’s popular neighborhoods, we spy Júlio in his
workshop dismantling a Portuguese guitar. While Júlio’s father reminds us of
the fado’s association with Lisbon’s criminal class in the nineteenth century,
Júlio begins his odyssey to search for the roots of the fado, by deconstructing
his instrument – an innovation to the fado, dating to the 1840s – to return to an
era when the fado was accompanied by viola [Spanish guitar] and beaten on
the palms of the hands.25
The gesture of the artisan, who is also a guitarrista, who reduces the guitarra
to disassembled, insignificant pieces of wood, marks Júlio’s relationship to his
instrument throughout the film. When Ana Maria auditions for Sousa Morais
and the producers of the musical Jardim das Canções, she asks Júlio to play a
happy fado: “Dá-me um Beijo.”26 As Ana Maria triumphs in the light fado
canção, we observe Júlio as uneasy with the Portuguese guitar. He glances
nervously at Ana Maria, frustrated by the alien fado. In his rehearsal with Ana
Maria, Júlio taught her to sing the fado rigoroso: mourarias, corridos, dois
tons, and menores; therefore the tempo and tone of the fado canção perturb and
overwhelm him.
We have mentioned that in the production of Jardim das Canções, Ana
Maria emerges from a giant wooden reproduction of a Portuguese guitar. The
stage design, therefore, signals the fado novo’s distance from Severa’s fado
batido; fado and guitarra will be inextricably linked to each other for the rest
of the twentieth century. As Ana Maria becomes more famous, however, the
guitarrista recedes from the foreground. The singer appears on stage and the
fado canção’s guitarras are complemented by string orchestras and pianos. In
fact, when Ana Maria sings at the Spanish embassy, she is accompanied neither
by guitarra nor viola.
Júlio is no longer visibly the guitarrista; we are aware that he accompanies
Ana Maria, yet he never appears on stage with her. When finally we see him
with a guitarra, he is closing it in its case: shrouding it in its tomb. At that
moment Júlio abandons the guitarra and questions Ana Maria’s talent as a

25 For more on the role of the guitarra in the evolution of the fado, see Pimentel, Pinto de
Carvalho, Sucena, Vieira Nery, and the Museu Casa do Fado e da Guitarra Portuguesa in Lisbon.
26 Silva Tavares/Frederico de Freitas, “Dá-me um Beijo.” Jardim das Canções seems to be
a play on Pátio das Cantigas, which could have been Amália’s first film. According to Pavão dos
Santos, p. 81, António Lopes Ribeiro had asked Amália to play the fadista but because of her
eyebrows “que não eram possíveis para o cinema” [that were not possible for cinema]), Lopes
Ribeiro gave the role to Maria Paula.

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 FADO, HISTÓRIA D’UMA CANTADEIRA 115

fadista, as he tells her: “Já não sabes cantar.” [You don’t know how to sing
anymore.] We are reminded of the slightly ridiculous scenes of Virgílio Teixeira
teaching Amália Rodrigues to sing, as she fakes singing badly “Só à Noitinha.”27
Thus we interpret Júlio’s reproach as Ana Maria being unable to sing the fado
castiço; she has abandoned it for the fado canção.
Júlio’s criticism of Ana Maria’s ability to sing the fado proves to be both
reflective and prophetic. While his insult appears to be motivated by stylistic
preferences or generic tastes, Júlio indicates the censoring of Ana Maria’s fadista
voice in the professionalization of the artist. During five scenes in the film, Ana
Maria’s desire to sing fado is compromised: she is hushed; she is forced to sing;
she sings when she is not singing – through radio broadcast; she is coerced into
betraying the national song by singing flamenco; and, finally, she cannot finish
her fado menor.
Upon returning home after Ana Maria’s debut at the tasca and having been
seduced by Chico Fadista’s grand plans for the vedette, Júlio and Ana Maria
sing the “Fado de Cada Um” outside Luisinha’s window, to lull her to sleep.
Júlio’s mother interrupts the singer by closing the shutters and reminding her
that it is late. The gesture of silencing the fadista, and, in effect, silencing
Alfama’s fado, foreshadows the censoring of Ana Maria’s voice as a profession-
al artist. She may no longer sing freely on the streets of Alfama; rather she may
and must sing only when and where her contract stipulates.28
Singing fado ceases to be Ana Maria’s vocation and singing the fado novo
and the fado canção becomes her profession. She is bound by a legal contract
and her art is compromised by the legislation of Decreto-Lei 13 725. We have
mentioned that after Ana Maria causes Luisinha’s crippling, and eventually
fatal, accident, she resolves never to sing the fado again. However, Júlio convinces
Ana Maria of her legal obligation to her contract and thus she is compelled to
sing for Chico Fadista.
The diachronic evolution of the fado into the fado novo of the twentieth century
becomes apparent in the scene in which Ana Maria, Luisinha, and the neighbors
listen to the fado on the new radio. Ana Maria has gone from the pre-1927 un-
contracted singer in a local tasca to the post-1927 professionalized artist. When
Luisinha returns from the hospital, she, her family, her neighbors, and Ana Maria
sit before a radio to hear Ana Maria sing “Fado, Não Sei Quem És.”29 The film
presents the novelty of the technology and, simultaneously, the fado novo’s

27 Silva Tavares/Frederico de Freitas, “Só à Noitinha (Saudades de ti).” In Pavão dos Santos,
p. 82, Amália explains the genesis of the rehearsal scene.
28 In Pavão dos Santos, p. 47, we may observe a biographical coincidence between Ana
Maria’s naïveté and Amália Rodrigues’s ignorance of professionalism and the implications of a
contract for a working fadista.
29 In Pavão dos Santos, p. 53, Amália Rodrigues remembers her early broadcasts on radio.

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116 FADO AND THE URBAN POOR IN PORTUGUESE CINEMA

marriage to the Emissora Nacional as the result of the 1920s’ launching of Rádio
Colonial, Lisbon’s first radio station. The official inception of radio in 1933
signals the definitive migration of the fado novo from Lisbon to Portugal.30
Whereas the expression “cancão nacional” [national song] is tossed around by
both supporters and critics of the fado prior to the 1930s (in an effort to imbue
the Portuguese character with or else purge it of the fado), the national broadcast
of the fado novo during and after the 1930s thrusts the song into all corners of
the nation, thus determining Portuguese musical tastes for four decades.
The appearance of the radio in Perdigão Queiroga’s film, however, also
serves to draw our attention to another example of Ana Maria’s censorship as
a result of her professional contract. Before Luisinha goes into the hospital,
Ana Maria sings for her upon request. When Luisinha returns from the hospital,
Ana Maria does not sing for her; rather, they listen to her, played back on the
radio. The circumstances of the scene signal the abhorrent commercial nature
of the fado novo. Ana Maria, once again, may not sing at will. Her voice,
however, is available for the nation, at the whims of her producers and agents.
The fadista is forced to sing for an impersonal public, and therefore deprived
of the intimacy of singing for friends and neighbors. The scene echoes the
lyrics of “Duas Luzes,” the fado that Ana Maria practiced with Júlio in an
earlier scene: “Eu gostaria mãezinha/ De cantar p’ra ti somente/ Mas tu és tão
pobrezinha/ Que canto p’ra toda a gente” [Mother, I would love/ To sing just
for you/ But you’re so poor/ That I have to sing for everyone].31 The contractual
nature of the post-1927 fadista’s performance and the large-scale, deperson-
alized character of the post-1930s radio broadcasts of the fado promote the
national song at the expense of the art. This new face of the fado is scrutinized
when Ana Maria confesses that she revels in the adoration of her fans; Júlio
responds scornfully: “Aplaudem é a mulher não a artista” [They’re applauding
for the woman, not the artist].32
Ana Maria’s first foray into international stardom consists of her performance
at the Spanish Embassy in Lisbon. The humble fadista from Alfama appears
dressed as a high society lady at a ball. When Sousa Morais presents Ana Maria

30 Estrela, vol. 1, pp. 86–7. The first Portuguese radio station, Rádio Hertz, appears in 1914.
In 1923, ORSEC broadcasts in Porto; in 1924, Rádio Lisboa/Rádio Colonial is founded in the
capital. In 1925, CT1AA, CT1DH, and Rádio Condes appear in Lisbon and Ideal Rádio and
Rádio Porto in the Cidade Invicta. In 1928, Rádio Clube da Costa do Sol (Rádio Português) and
Rádio Acordeon broadcast in Lisbon, followed, in 1929, by Rádio Sonora (Voz de Lisboa) and
Rádio Motorola. The 1933 appearance of EN, the Emissora Nacional, the voice of the Estado
Novo, plays a significant role in the regular diffusion of the fado novo. Sucena, p. 214. Between
1937 and 1959, Rádio Clube Português hosts live broadcasts of fado.
31 Silva Tavares/Frederico de Freitas, “Duas Luzes.”
32 In Pavão dos Santos, p. 56, Amália Rodrigues comments on the attention from her fans
in the early stages of her career.

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 FADO, HISTÓRIA D’UMA CANTADEIRA 117

to the Spanish Ambassador (Paul Carvalho) and his guests, he announces: “A

grande fadista, Ana Maria, vai cometer uma traição ao fado e cantar uma canção
espanhola.” [The great fadista, Ana Maria, is going to betray the fado and sing
a Spanish song.] She sings “No me quieras tanto” accompanied by an orchestra.33
Ana Maria has ceased to be a fadista, or even a Portuguese singer; the price of
her professional license is artistic treason. The Ambassador’s guests are uncertain
of the musical genre that Ana Maria is singing. A refined older woman asks her
friend if she is listening to fado or opera; the friend explains that they are
listening to flamenco.
Ana Maria triumphs as a Spanish singer at the expense of the fado. When
she returns to Alfama, dressed in an evening gown and diamonds, to kneel
before the dead Luisinha, she tries to sing the menor, “O Fado de Cada Um.”
Upon the lines: “E do berço até à morte” [From birth to death], Ana Maria is
overwhelmed with grief and cannot finish her fado. The episode returns us to
the earlier scenes in which Ana Maria sings the same fado, accompanied by
Júlio. She was not overcome with emotion; the audience perceived communally
the catharsis of the fado menor: the collective reality of the lines: “Todos temos
o nosso fado” [We all have a fate (fado)]. On the contrary, beside Luisinha’s
deathbed, Ana Maria does not evoke sympathy for her mourning. Rather, the
neighbors resent her intrusion; as they exit, they look upon the elegant singer
of foreign songs with deprecation.
Júlio returns to the tasca where he transforms into a mid-nineteenth-cen-
tury fadista. He fights with a drunkard (Pestana Amorim) who responds by
flashing a knife. The camera focuses quickly on the blade and pans to pause
on the bloody stain of a spilled bottle of wine. Júlio has become the caricatured
ruffian of Alfama’s Limoeiro prison or Mouraria’s “Rua Suja” [Dirty Street].
He ceases to be a rational, yet passionate, man to assume the role of a despicable
anachronism: a vagrant who avenges insult with violence. He is the Count of
Marialva, infected by Capelão’s lawlessness, in Dantas’s A Severa. He becomes
Severa’s real-life lover, o Chico de 10, who slit the throat of his amorous rival.
He is Josezinho de Alfama, who stabbed a Galician; or perhaps his common-law
wife in African degredo, Maria Petiza, who tried to stab Josezinho.34 He is
every cliché that ever walked the streets of these folkloric, however historic,
Mourarias and Alfamas.
Júlio abandons his career as a musician to become a fadista in the pre-1849
definition of the term: “pessoa que cumpre um mau destino; seja homem ou
mulher, prostituta ou rufião” [a person who carries out a bad fate; be it man or

33 Quintero y León/M. López Quiroga, “No me quieras tanto.”

34 For more on these nineteenth-century fadistas, see Pinto de Carvalho.

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118 FADO AND THE URBAN POOR IN PORTUGUESE CINEMA

woman, prostitute or vagrant].35 In a similar manner, Ana Maria is no longer a

fadista, but a singer for a society alien to the reality of the tascas of Alfama and
Mouraria. Their positions reflect the ideological polar extremes of the 1923
fadista’s union schism: tavern vs. salon.36
As Júlio returns to Alfama, walking through the streets of Ribeira Velha,
the “Fado da Saudade” plays mockingly on a violin: “Eu canto o fado para mim/
Já o cantei para nós dois/ Mas isso foi no passado” [I sing fado for myself/ I’ve
sung it for both of us/ But that was in the past] and thus draws our attention to
the forsaken guitarra and the absent lyrics relevant to Júlio’s resentment toward
Ana Maria: “O [fado] mais feliz é o teu/ Tenho a certeza/ Não é o fado da
pobreza/ Que nos leve a felicidade/ Se Deus o quis/ Não te invejo essa conquista/
Porque o meu é mais fadista/ Meu fado da saudade” [Your fado (fate) is happier
than mine/ I’m certain/ It’s not the fado (fate) of the poor/ That brings us
happiness/ But if that’s how God wanted it/ I don’t envy your conquest/ Because
(my fate/fado) is more fadista/ My wistful fado].37 The musical arrangement
complements the scene following the lovers’ encounter on the steps. Júlio pushes
Ana Maria out of the way, and the embittered singer walks away from Alfama
as a symphonic version of “Fado, Não Sei Quem És” taunts her, reminding us
that she has forgotten the fado: forgotten Alfama.
Ana Maria resolves to marry Sousa Morais and to take the fado to Brazil.
Her decision marks the contemporary internationalization of the fado when, in
1945, Amália Rodrigues goes to Rio de Janeiro to record her first album. Júlio
plans to go to Africa. Symbolically, he continues the trajectory of the nine-
teenth-century fadista: expiation in a prison camp on the African coast. Or
perhaps he is seduced by the fado’s vague African provenance in the late eight-
eenth-century lundum.
As Júlio prepares to depart he returns to the tasca and, between wiping away
tears, he plays the “Fado de Cada Um.” Upon learning from Lingrinhas (Eugénio
Salvador) that Júlio is to go to Africa, Ana Maria decides to abandon her plans
to marry the rich producer. She returns to sing the fado menor with Júlio. The
lovers fail to fulfill their odysseys of searching for the fado’s speculative birth
and death: respectively, lundum and fado canção.
The fado menor triumphs over the fado canção and the fado vadio that
separated the lovers. Júlio is once again a guitarrista and Ana Maria a fadista.
She takes the black shawl from Júlio’s mother’s shoulders: a gesture of reverence
to the ghosts of severas of the previous century and complicity with the neighbors
of Alfama. With a tearful smile, Júlio keeps up with Ana Maria’s abruptly

35 Pimentel, p. 43.
36 See note 7.
37 Silva Tavares/Frederico de Freitas, “Fado da Saudade.”

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 FADO, HISTÓRIA D’UMA CANTADEIRA 119

changing tempo. And it is the verse of the “Fado de Cada Um” that Ana Maria
does not sing that best narrates her fateful resignation to defy the seemingly
inevitable modernization of Alfama and the fado:

No meu fado amargurado

A sina minha
Bem clara se revelou
Pois cantando
Seja quem for, adivinha
Na minha voz soluçando
Que eu finjo ser quem não sou

[In my bitter fado

My fate revealed
Itself to me clearly
So by singing
Whoever I am, you can figure it out
In my sobbing voice
I pretend to be someone else]

Ana Maria’s resignation sounds like dissociation. In light of such an ending we

must question the pedagogical message, if there is one, regarding the fado and
the urban poor who want more. The ending undermines the internationalization
of the national song and downplays the successful careers of a new generation
of fadistas, like Amália Rodrigues and Carlos Ramos, who makes his debut in
a cameo in this film. By devolving the fado to its local origins, the ending prevents
the fado from telling the world too much, or indeed anything for that matter,
about Portugal. It can only tell us about Lisbon, and more specifically about a
stagnant Lisbon that triumphs against the temptation of ambition.
What can we learn about class at the end of the 1940s in Portugal through
Portuguese film? Whatever it is, we stop learning it in the 1950s, when fadistas
continue to appear in feature-length films. The successful careers of contem-
porary fadistas are the backdrop for films produced in the 1950s and 1960s.
Their fame ranges from recognition in local fado houses (Deolinda Rodrigues
as Margarida in Perdigão Queiroga’s Madragoa [1952], Rosa Silvestre as Lena
in Henrique Campos’s Rosa de Alfama [1953], Fernando Farinha in Constantino
Esteves’s O Miúdo da Bica [1964] and A Última Pega [1964]) to national fame
(Amália Rodrigues as Maria do Amparo in Jorge Brum de Canto’s Fado
Corrido [1964]) to international stardom (Amália Rodrigues in Augusto Fraga’s
Sangue Toureiro [1958]).
What else can filmmakers do with the Severa myth other than mold it to the
contemporary fado? In 1947, in Perdigão Queiroga’s Fado, it would seem that

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120 FADO AND THE URBAN POOR IN PORTUGUESE CINEMA

Sousa Morais is Marialva and Ana Maria, Severa. In that case, when Ana Maria
returns to Alfama to sing her resignation to poverty with Júlio, we may spy
Maria Severa jumping into a saloio laundry wagon, only to turn up singing at
a tavern in the Bairro Alto. But unlike Leitão de Barros’s scene, Perdigão
Queiroga’s scene ends the film. The fadista has returned to her habitat: and that
habitat is the crowded slums of Alfama. But in 1947, Ana Maria is the star who
is born, who has experienced class mobility, and as such she cannot just return
to Alfama. This is evident when we see the awkward audience that, out of
respect, listens to the picking of the pitiable Júlio. This could be a great moment
of alienation for the star (as it often is in Hollywood versions of the fairy tale),
but in Perdigão Queiroga’s film the celebrity is welcomed home.
And that is exactly why the film must end when it ends. Ana Maria is already
splitting as she pretends to be someone else, in a setting that is willing to ignore
that there might be more out there than just the pubs of Alfama. The movie
flirts with the notion of the celebrity fadista as the marialva. Ana Maria has
already worn the jewels and gowns of that class and, as such, Júlio will always
be relegated to the role of her accompaniment, as will be the case for guitar-
ristas in the commercial fado world of the late twentieth century, with the
exception of Carlos Paredes. And so the guitarrista – who in the past would
have been the working-class laborer who threatened subversion – slowly becomes
the moral conscience of the regime; he pulls the ambitious fadista back into the
class fold of a seemingly socialist Alfama, where she owes society a debt for
the unhappiness she has sown with her vain fado.
By the 1950s, the ideology hijacks the individual and programs a cinematic
clone to link his values to those of the state. The individual is annihilated, in-
corporated, interpellated. In Perdigão Queiroga’s Madragoa, Zé Luís is the
clone who talks a lot about how hard he works, although he does so while leaning
out of a window smoking a cigarette. The fadista in film starts to grow regretfully
morbid, as her own individuality is bound up in defying the strictures of polite
society, probing the boundaries of class, and being individual: “Severas há uma
só!” [There’s only one Severa.] But when her fate is linked to that of the reoriented
socialist laborer who questions her role in society, then she also will be annihilated,
sometimes even before we ever get to see her live.
In Madragoa, Margarida barely finishes singing the title fado before she
starts coughing. I believe that it is significant that a drama from 1952 should
start with the dying, tuberculoid fadista. The film announces in its first
scene that this expiring character will not be long for the story. Leitão de
Barros’s by now classic ending that immortalized the cinematic image of
the fadista is Perdigão Queiroga’s beginning; and perhaps his killing Severa
off so early is an act of kindness, for the fadista has not fared well in the
dramas of the 1940s.

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 FADO, HISTÓRIA D’UMA CANTADEIRA 121

The lyrics of Margarida’s dying fado betray the double consciousness of the
Lisbon fadista who must diminish her origins to restore class hierarchy. Her
fado is her repentance before her agony, and she cannot help but sing of her
poor neighborhood’s virtues, thus confirming the existence of a virtuous poor:

Ó, velha Madragoa
Tens a esperança e nada mais
E há tanta coisa boa
Noutros bairros, seus rivais
Ó, velha Madragoa,
Não tens um só painel
Um arco ou um brazão
Só tens ó Madragoa
Nos lábios doce mel
No peito um coração

[Oh ancient Madragoa

You have hope and nothing else
And there is so much that is good
In other neighborhoods, your rivals
Oh, ancient Madragoa
You don’t have a single painel [tile painting]
An archway or a scutcheon
You only have, oh Madragoa
On your lips, sweet honey
And in your bosom a heart.]

However, we may read in her humility an indictment of the invisibility of her

neighborhood and its poor in comparison to a more visible, monumental Lisbon.
As the fadista is dying, she confirms that she belongs to her humble neighbor-
hood, and in some way to that class. Her fado, sung from the height of her
window, albeit through congested lungs, manages to disseminate her neighbor-
hood’s virtues to everyone, like the pregões [hawking] of the varinas [fishwives]
who are so entrenched in Madragoa’s folkloric identity. Beyond the narrative
reality, Perdigão Queiroga’s title and Deolinda Rodrigues’s interpretation manage
to record for posterity the humble virtues of Lisbon poverty, and to expose the
façade of that monumental Lisbon that everyone must see.
The death of the fadista is one of the most important tropes of Portuguese
popular culture, and Severa’s has been performed, recorded, and distorted for
decades after Leitão de Barros’s film. But the fact that Perdigão Queiroga stages
the fadista’s death among the working class – rather than alone in an alley or
in the arms of a fidalgo – is what gives the fadista a chance at dying within a

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122 FADO AND THE URBAN POOR IN PORTUGUESE CINEMA

class. The fact that Perdigão Queiroga’s Madragoa dispenses with the marialva
returns us to Malhoa’s painting and Mariaud’s Fado, in which the focus is on
the fadista as part of a class, and hearkens to a recent time – recent to Malhoa
– in which being a fadista actually constituted a class.
Perhaps in the same way that we may read Brum de Cantos’s Fado Corrido
as the story of what would have happened if Severa had lived in the arms of her
Count, we may read Perdigão Queiroga’s Madragoa as what would have happened
if Ana Maria had stayed with Júlio Guitarrista. We already see how Júlio tries
to reel in Ana Maria to his own values regarding the genre of the fado and the
identity of the fadista. Júlio is also a clone who appears to represent a more
socialist and even anarchist fado, but really what he is doing is performing the
duties of a castiço identity so that he may exploit it to hold Ana Maria back
from realizing her artistic ambitions. From real life, we know that the rising-star
fadista Amália Rodrigues did not stay with her guitarrista husband; rather she
ended up in a long-distant relationship with a banker. Yet we know that she
could have supported herself.
Vieira remarks:

The celebration of [fado] as the national song began as a concession to

popular taste, only to be consolidated after the late 1940s with Amália’s
national and international success. Indeed, the amor fati, accompanied by
a certain masochistic pleasure in suffering, that lies at the core of so many
fado songs, is not consistent with the virtues of hard work, moderation, and
perseverance that the regime wanted to instill in the Portuguese people.38

The realities of the Lisbon fadista after the incursion of radio and film do make
their way onto screen, particularly in Fado, História d’uma Cantadeira; but
only in Perdigão Queiroga’s Madragoa do we see her downfall occur among a
class that is her own and that represents “bons costumes” [good customs] as
António Ferro understands them.
Madragoa further complicates the Severa/Marialva paradigm when the
fadista dies. Luís, her widower, marries Clara, the daughter of the rich merchant,
Santana. In this case, it is not the urban poor of the fadista class who triumph;
rather, it is the socialist clone who thought that the cure for his dying wife was
work. If her job is singing and she has a bronchial disease, then he may be
willing her to die in the arms of the fado. Yet it is he who succeeds – and lives
– through hard work. Furthermore, his social ambition is attenuated by the
nobility of his cause: to rescue his godfather from debt with money that Zé

38 Vieira, pp. 155–6.

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 FADO, HISTÓRIA D’UMA CANTADEIRA 123

Luís’s family has brought back from Africa. Family – as in the one Zé Luís
comes from – and work ethic – as in the way they made money from an exploited
African colony – are the victors; Margarida, the fatal casualty; and Santana, a
bad kind of nouveau-riche who gets his come-uppance when he is rescued by
the noble poor who are rewarded with riches.
As the fadista becomes more visible in popular culture and Lisbon becomes
more present in film, the focus seems to shift from dissuading viewers from the
notion of an easy life of poverty in the capital to controlling the contrary evidence
of the lives of famous fadistas who – although they did not all have easy lives
in Lisbon – serve as examples of a successful climb out of the material realities
of poverty. Despite the apparent promotion of the status quo in Perdigão Queiroga’s
Fado and Madragoa, these films recognize diverse realities for fadistas, and in
that way they help the viewer understand the fado’s coming-of-age as a genre;
and as Severa expires allegorically and physically in these films, her new deaths
make way for the new fadista – the professional and the amateur. But if that
modern fadista cannot be represented on film without being punished, then
Perdigão Queiroga’s films provide an important link to our understanding of the
evolving role of the fado in Salazarist popular culture. Later films like Sangue
Toureiro and Fado Corrido sensationalize the celebrity of fadistas, and in doing
so, become difficult to read for information about the fado. Instead, they allow
us to read for information about social ambition. Perdigão Queiroga’s films gives
us both types of information, and more. And perhaps the director’s euthanasia
of Severa is not even that; rather, it his resurrection of her, as it recognizes that
the regurgitation of Leitão de Barros’s Severa cannot go on in film.
Many scholars, including myself, have read the compression of the Severa
myth in the conflated public, private, and performed lives of Amália Rodrigues.
We have understood a supplanting of Severa’s mythology with the mito Amália
[the Amália myth] as either coincidence or deliberate branding. And whereas
Amália has denied any similarities between herself and the real-life Severa, her
own biography contains elements that in the context of Carlos Coelho da Silva’s
film, Amália, allow us to understand that her own life story has been fit to our
cinematic expectations of the fadista, who is still Leitão de Barros’s and Júlio
Dantas’s Severa.
Apart from the marialvistic nature of some of Amália’s well-known rela-
tionships, her difficult relationship with her mother, her rumored betrayal of
the people (not just the neighborhood) for the sake of privilege, and her return
to the people before her death keep Severa lurking in the background of Coelho
da Silva’s biopic. But when the fadista dies, and when her own composition
“Grito” is played at her funeral – and later (in real life) to commemorate her
exhumation and the transfer of her remains to the Panteão Nacional – her fado
becomes the new “Novo Fado da Severa,” literally filling the function of Dantas’s

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124 FADO AND THE URBAN POOR IN PORTUGUESE CINEMA

composition in Leitão de Barros’s film, and the function of Sousa do Casacão’s

“Fado da Severa” at the end of Dantas’s novel. “Grito,” every time it is performed,
signals the achievement of a humble fadista from Pena who ended up being
buried in a common cemetery (Prazeres) and then being reburied on display at
one of Portugal’s most honored resting sites, albeit a museum. Dantas’s “Novo
Fado da Severa (Rua do Capelão),” likewise, always reminds us of Severa’s
death in the arms of the fado and in the arms of the aristocrat who returned in
Leitão de Barros’s final scenes. And Sousa do Casacão’s fado reminds us that
the Count did not return, but that he did cry. This textual dialogue revolving
around the death anthems of Lisbon fadistas – dating back to 1848 – is reflected
in Portugese cinema of the 1930s, 1940s, and beyond.
By examining the structural similarities in the evolution of fadista mythologies
in Portuguese film of the last ninety years, we may understand that Severa and
the fadista evolve in cinema as part of a greater culture that must incorporate the
realities of fadistas before any film may portray those realities. And ironically,
in this way, the fadista character in film is always a bit behind the times in relation
to the suggested figures, with whom they will never catch up. For the Severa myth
connects them all, and at the same time it is what holds them back in Portuguese
cinema; and as a result of the widespread diffusion of images that deny the
successful realities of fadistas, it is what holds them back in society, for the fadista’s
reputation will follow her well into the early twenty-first century. But ironically,
the association with the character of Severa is what propels their struggle and
realizes their development, however undeveloped it may appear.
Whatever development there may be comes at a price, for just as in Sousa do
Casacão’s fado, in Amália’s “Grito” we discover a fadista who dies alone, who
makes a “companheira” [best friend] out of “solidão” [solitude], only to discover
the pain of such a relationship: “Ai, solidão/ Quem fora escorpião/ Ai! Solidão/
E se mordera a cabeça!” [Ay, solitude/ Who was once a scorpion/ Ay, Solitude/
And it had stung its own head.] Amália dies alone, but by virtue that this is the
first time we hear the fadista’s final fado in the words of the fadista herself (as
Amália wrote the poem on which the song is based), Amália completes Severa’s
enactment of nationalism by dying in the arms of the fado. Amália writes the
fado and then dies in its arms. Her solitude and her individuality continue to be
the fadista’s most dignified traits, despite the romantic and social vicissitudes that
hinder her. But Amália perfects this through her legacy, which took the fadista
out of the common grave, where she lay anonymously among everybody and
nobody, to sit among the cenotaphs of Prince Henry the Navigator, Vasco da
Gama, and Luís de Camões, and the remains of Portugal’s first president, Teófilo
Braga, and the martyred presidential candidate, Humberto Delgado. No matter
what film tells us about the fadista, she has evolved in the public mind.

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