I wrote a lot today but I completely forgot to describe our Fado night last night.
Fado is a musical genre that probably originated in Lisbon at least 200 years ago. The songs are typically mournful in style and are traditionally about the sea or loss. The singer is accompanied by a Portuguese guitar that looks like a lute.
There are many places around the city where you can see people performing Fado, and it’s not just for tourists. Apparently the popular players can fill stadiums, but generally they play in bars or restaurants. We had dinner at a Fado restaurant, you get a three course meal and the show for a fixed price. Generally the food at these sort of places is pretty bad but Rita did her homework and found one where the food was supposed to be good. And so it was.
The maître d and our waiter were excellent. In fact, that’s been generally true of all the Portuguese people we’ve met here; they are friendly and helpful. Their English is usually good also, they don’t seem to expect visitors to be able to speak the language. They’re happy to help if you try the simple phrases.
There were three music sets during the meal, where they dim the lights, the band comes out and plays for 15-20 minutes, and then the lights come back up and you continue your meals. The band consisted of two guitar players, one normal acoustic guitar and one Portuguese one, and a singer. The guitar players were the same each time but there were three different singers, two women, and the final one being a man. The singing was hard to describe, but was very emotional and intense. It was all in Portuguese so we had no idea what they were about. The musicianship of everyone involved was really excellent, but I won’t be hurrying out to buy the CD (I wonder if it’s on Spotify?)
It was nearly midnight by the time the show finished but town was still pumping. People were trying to lure us into their bars with promises of free shots, but we’re too old for that sort of thing so we just Ubered home to bed.
