LiveSounds 2018 Fado Festival Newark/New York
Feature 1
Celesta Rodrigues at Sports Club Portugues
Kimberly DaCosta Holton, in an Essay entitled Fado: Chapter and Verse, introduced the 2017 festival with these words "Fado has a colorful history comprised of many chapters. The mournful ballad form, sometimes called Portugal’s “national song,” first appeared in the rough and tumble riverside neighborhoods of 1820s Lisbon. Fado was initially associated with the underbelly of urban life; prostitutes, sailors, vagabonds and drifters who would gather on the streets and in gritty taverns were among fado’s first performers—drinking and smoking, singing and strumming. Fado’s early incantation featured vocal and lyrical improvisation and verses about the difficulties and curiosities of daily life."
Antonio Zambujo performed at Lincoln Center in the David Rubenstein Atrium on March 29th.
Alot has changed since music migrated on sailing ships, but is practiced in fado houses on the same streets in Alfama today, and in 2011 was acknowledged by UNESCO as one of the world's Intangible Cultural Heritages.
Celeste Rodrigues, a fado legend at age 95, on stage at Town Hall in Manhattan.
That passion was heard at Town Hall in Manhattan when Carlos do Carmo, 78, and Celeste Rodrigues, 95, shared the stage. They were joined by José Manuel Neto, Portuguese guitar; Carlos Manuel Proença, classical guitar and Daniel Pinto, bass guitar.
Carlos do Carmo, a fado legend, on stage at Town Hall in Manhattan, during the 2018 Fado Festival.
Do Camo did sing some songs well known enough that the audience sang along, but one sensed he was reaching deeper in his New York debut including the wistful standard “The Shadow of your Smile” and a new fado written by poet, Hélia Correira, her first. Carlos sandwiched two sets around five haunting fados of understated intensity from Celeste Rodrigues.
Historical photos of artists and concert posters hung on the walls of the basement room, a small stage stood in the corner of the room crowded with diners. Singers, included audience members, Celeste Rodrigues, Teresinha Landeiro, took turns doing a few songs as brunch was served. Accompanying the singers was musicians Pedro Castro on Portuguese guitar and André Ramos on viola (classical guitar).
Teresinha Landeiro singing fado accompanied by Pedro de Castro on Portuguese guitar at the Sports Club Portugues in Newark's Ironbound neighborhood, part of Livesounds Fado Festival
Fado has a long, storied, and local history associated with the Lisbon waterfront. It has seen a resurgence in popularity over the past decade in Portugal, with young artists writing new lyrics and some taking liberties with the traditional format. A handful of the legends and innovators came to the US for the 2018 Fado Festival, a collaboration between Live Sounds and the Portuguese Consulate in New York .
Opening at The Schimmel Center for the Arts with Ricardo Ribeiro's return to New York March 24th. José Manuel Neto, Portuguese guitar; Carlos Manuel Proenca, fado guitar; and Daniel Pinto, bass viola accompanied him. The interaction between Ribeiro and Proenca was underpinned by the bass and guitar in a traditional fado setting.
Fado singer Antonio Zambujo in a 2011 appearance at Elebash Hall in Manhattan
Fado can be appreciated for its form, its beautiful songs and interactions between the performers, felt, if not understood by all listeners. For fado fans it is a poetic oral history, an expression of the collective soul, as passed from generation to generation.
Celesta Rodrigues at Town hall
Celeste is the sister of Amalia Rodriguez
Feature 3
Newark's Sports Club Portugues in the Ironbound neighborhood was transformed into a fado house for three evening shows and a fado brunch hosted by Helder Moutinho. Moutinho, a fadista and proprieter of the Maria Da Mouraria fado house in Lisbon conceived and organized the recreation of an intimate experience of the music, down to the food which he cooked himself.
Chick peas with cod chunks, Portuguese olive oil, and herbs; cicken gizzards in a tomato sauce; Mussels with baby mackeral onoins garlic coriander, cilantro and Portuguese olive oil.