Rodrigues, Amalia (1921–1999)

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Rodrigues, Amalia (1921–1999)

Portuguese fado singer known as "the soul of the nation" whose career spanned more than 50 years and made her Portugal's best-loved performer. Born Amalia Rodrigues in the slums of Lisbon in 1921 (she was never sure of the exact day; her grandmother told her it was in the cherry season, early summer); died on October 6, 1999; daughter of a trumpet player who died young and a mother who sold fruit in the street market; attended school until age 12; married Francisco Cruz (divorced in less than a year); married Cesar Seabra (an engineer), in 1961.

A petite woman dressed in black walked the narrow streets near the center of Lisbon, browsing through the items displayed by vendors in their stalls. Her appearance was ordinary, but as she passed by, older women were occasionally seen to cross themselves and make a reverential bow. The woman they paid tribute to was Amalia Rodrigues, the fado singer revered throughout Portugal. Known for her long career in nightclubs and on radio and television, she has been compared with France's Edith Piaf and America's Billie Holiday , but Rodrigues, for the Portuguese, was not simply a great singer; she was a cultural icon, the embodiment of the soul of the people.

Portugal is a small country with a complex culture that bears traces of the many migrations it has seen over the past 2,000 years. Phoenicians, Greeks, Celts, Romans, Suevi, Visigoths, Muslims (both Arab and Berber), Jews, Italians, Flemings, Burgundian French, black Africans, and Asians have all left their imprint within its borders. It is one of Europe's oldest nation states, and, except for a brief period under Spanish rule, has been a sovereign state since 1140. Its maritime culture began through fishing, but knowledge of the sea eventually led the Portuguese to foreign invasions and the establishment of myriad colonies. For a time, the country was the third largest colonial empire in the world. It remained relatively prosperous through the 18th century, but then fell on harder times. In 1908, King Charles I and his heir Luís were murdered by anarchist Republicans, bringing down the Portuguese monarchy. Chaos followed the assassinations: over the next 16 years, 45 governments were formed and dissolved. Political instability severely affected the country's economic life, and the poor, such as the Rodrigues family, were particularly hard hit. The military took over the government in 1926, and four years later António de Oliveir Salazar, a professor of economics from Coimbra University, became prime minister and established a dictatorship which would last for 40 years. Politically and culturally conservative, Salazar wielded enormous influence at every level, including the arts.

This, then, was the world into which Amalia Rodrigues was born in 1921, and the background for fado, the musical genre with which she is so closely identified. The term derives from fatum, the Latin word for fate, and means a traditional urban song performed by either a woman or a man (singers of either sex are called fadistas), although women singers have long dominated the art. Some scholars trace the genre through Brazilian and African roots back to Muslim, Moorish, and North African elements mixed in with the Hispanic. It also has connections to the bitter 18th-century ballads composed by Portuguese convicts on their way into exile and forced labor in Portugal's African colonies, which were picked up and brought back to Lisbon by Portuguese sailors. The music is essentially urban, and strongly associated with Lisbon's slums; it was part of the city's popular culture by the 18th century. The first great fadista was Maria Severa , a Gypsy (Roma) prostitute whose singing became popular in the 1830s. For 26 years, Severa devoted her life to love, bullfights, wine, and fado, and the black shawl usually worn onstage by women fadistas is considered a tribute to her memory. The essential element conveyed in a fado song is saudade, a word that all but defies translation into English. Although its origin is obscure, some suggest that the word derives from the Latin solitate, from which the English "solitary" is also derived. Others identify it with the Arabic word saudawi, which refers to someone stricken with melancholy and a longing to be alone. Saudade is a common term in colloquial Portuguese, suggesting both a kind of nostalgia and yearning as well as a sweet remembrance of persons and things from the past. Said Rodrigues, "I have so much sadness in me…. I am a pessimist, a nihilist. Everything that fado demands in a singer I have in me."

Rodrigues was born in a working-class district of Lisbon, the daughter of a trumpet player who died young and a mother too poor to raise her. She was sent to stay with her grandmother, who earned her living by doing embroidery, and

at age 12 quit school to go to work. She was employed for a time as a dressmaker's apprentice, but she hated the tedious sewing inside the cramped shop, and escaped by selling fruit with mother in the market. Rodrigues enjoyed being out in the open air of the streets, and legend has it that she first sang in public at the market, while she sold her oranges. Her brothers, however, disliked the attention she drew, and forced her to take another job in a cannery. She missed singing in the streets, and of the cannery job later said, "I wanted to kill myself every day."

Meanwhile, she began performing at various festivals in her district, particularly the one known as the "March of Lisbon," and always found people ready to listen. When Rodrigues was 18, a neighbor introduced her to a guitarist who played at the Retiro da Severa, one of the best fado clubs in Lisbon. Impressed by her voice, the guitarist arranged an audition for her at the club. Her talent was quickly recognized, and she was soon performing at the Retiro da Severa. "Five months later," she later said, "I already had top billing in a theater. I didn't have to struggle—it was very easy."

Rodrigues' sudden ascent to fame and fortune in the 1940s opened new worlds for the poor girl from the slums. Night after night she appeared throughout Lisbon in various casas de fado, the café/taverns where families and people of all ages came to hear their favorite music. On-stage, Rodrigues wore a long, full black gown which covered everything but her hands, without jewelry save for a diamond pendant on occasion. Accompanied by two to four musicians on the viola, guitar, and the portuguesa (a long-necked lute dating from the Renaissance), she sang songs about love, jealousy, and the sadness of parting while the crowd sat motionless through every wailing note.

I am a pessimist, a nihilist. Everything that fado demands in a singer I have in me.
—Amalia Rodrigues

Long after success made Rodrigues the family breadwinner, her life continued to be dominated by her brothers. When she fell in love with Francisco Cruz, a guitarist, her brothers objected and refused to approve the match. They finally gave her their permission to marry him, after which she divorced Cruz within a year. She also expanded her performances into larger theaters, and began to star in movies. Salazar called her "the soul of Portugal." Juan, count of Barcelona and father of the future King Juan Carlos I of Spain, once came onstage during a performance to kiss her hand. Rodrigues could afford the best accompanists and was booked into the country's best theaters, and Portuguese poets vied to write lyrics for her to sing; the country was at her feet.

Outside Portugal, Rodrigues' first triumph was at the Olympia in Paris in 1953, followed by successful engagements at La Vie en Rose and Mocambo in the United States. In 1966, she appeared at Lincoln Center in New York City with the New York Philharmonic, under the direction of Andre Kostelanetz. Recordings also made her singing widely known in Portuguese-speaking communities overseas, helping to establish her reputation worldwide. As Rodrigues noted, "Families used to go to the casa de fado every day to listen. It wasn't a restaurant, a cafe or a night club. You had a drink and listened…. Now there are no more casas de fado, but the fado is [everywhere] … even on television." Even when the advent of new media caused many of the old taverns to fall on bad times, fado remained the "national song, the expression of the people," and Amalia Rodrigues was its soul.

In 1961, after remaining single for 20 years, Rodrigues married for a second time, to Cesar Seabra, an engineer. They lived for a time in Brazil, where Rodrigues had many fans, before returning to Lisbon because she felt that her people wanted her home again. The couple bought an 18th-century home where Rodrigues, by now a wealthy woman, delighted in tending the garden. She was always loyal to her extended family, spending her money freely and never forgetting those who had shared her poverty-stricken youth. Portugal's most highly paid performer, she continued to appear onstage, albeit somewhat more infrequently than in earlier years, and any performance she gave was a guaranteed sellout.

Although she was never a political partisan, Rodrigues did find her life affected by Portuguese politics. At the beginning of the Salazar regime, fado music was highly criticized, but the reputation of the form was gradually rehabilitated as an expression of traditional Portuguese culture. In that phase, it was natural for Salazar to identify with Rodrigues and heap praise on her, angering some of her fans who opposed the dictator and the attention given her from the highest echelons of government. Ignoring her critics, Rodriguez said, "The Portuguese are jealous lovers. They say that I drink, that I am a spy, that I work for the secret police, that I sing only for ministers." And she continued to sing. After Salazar's death in 1970 and the military coup four years later that finally ended the country's dictatorship, both Rodrigues and fado came under new criticism. Some accused her of having profited from her favored position during Salazar's regime, a charge she hotly denied, claiming "I always sang fado without thinking of politics." Fado itself came under fire for being reactionary and fatalistic, and there were those who felt that the country would benefit both culturally and emotionally if the genre were banished in favor of the more international rhythms of rock and jazz. Pop fado emerged, adding drums and clarinet to traditional guitar accompaniment, and performers like Maria da Fé sang to a more positive jazz beat, while Tereza Tarouca revived the classical aristocratic fado sung by fidalgos (those of noble birth), which was lighter and less urban. For a while, the new sounds seemed to put fado under the threat of extinction.

But the music of Amalia Rodrigues spoke as eloquently to Portugal's younger generation as it had to their parents, and fado refused to die. Her recording of "Grandola Vila Morena" swept the country at the end of the dictatorship, demonstrating that she was a true democrat, and the socialist government gave her the Order of Santiago, the nation's highest honor. Perhaps it was the singer's poor background that helped her to understand the people of her country better than anyone. "Five centuries ago, many Portuguese sailors roamed the world's seas," she said. "This is how the fado began. They were far from home and their loved ones, facing unknown worlds; they lived under difficult conditions and truly suffered, submitting to the uncertainties of fate. For us, the Portuguese, the fado is a kind of atavism." For decades, Portuguese continued to fall silent to listen when Amalia Rodrigues, the soul of her country, sang fado. When she died on October 6, 1999, the government declared a three-day period of national mourning, and all political activity in the country's general election campaign was suspended.