The Portuguese Guitar: History and Transformation of an Instrument Associated with Fado

Since the mid-nineteenth century the Portuguese guitar has been connected to the fado genre. Both the instrument and the song genre have experienced significant transformations, at times related to aesthetic changes, at other times conditioned by social, political and economic alterations. This thesis focuses on the organological development of the Portuguese guitar, as an instrument associated with fado, and explores how the Lisbon guitar model has been progressively replaced by the Coimbra guitar model (both in practice and iconic symbolism). I argue that this tendency is related to the current new era of Portuguese guitar practice with its origins in the post-revolutionary period lived in Portugal after 1974. My study is based on the review and analysis of the most recent works on the subject, fieldwork among players and makers, iconographic and archival research, and my own experience as a player and maker of both models of the Portuguese guitar

Silêncio que se vai cantar o fado...

Tentarei explicar como acontece a estranha consistência de uma música que todos os portugueses reconhecem como sua, que o mundo inteiro reconhece como portuguesa – enquadramento social do fado, suas características mais marcantes, conteúdos cantados, base musical e instrumentos utilizados, fados tradicionais e improvisação. O silêncio também … Nem musicóloga, nem historiadora, sou uma cantadeira que fala do fado como se de um amigo fosse. Este texto serviu de base para uma comunicação apresentada no seminário “Processos composicionais na música brasileira – a musicalidade no lundum e no fado, na chula e no samba” (5ª Mostra de Música Leão do Norte, Sesc Santo Amaro – Recife, outubro de 2014). Darei alguns exemplos cantados (links propostos ao longo do texto). Neles, em modo "ensaio", juntaram-se gentilmente a mim António Queiroz, Nuno Siqueira (guitarra portuguesa) e Rui Silveira (viola), a quem muito agradeço. Agradeço ainda a Rodrigo Lacerda pelo apoio logístico à gravação dos vídeos.In this article I will try to explain how the strange consistency of a genre that all the Portuguese people recognize as theirs, which the whole world recognizes as Portuguese, is shaped – the social framework of fado, its most striking characteristics, lyrics, musical base and instruments used, traditional fado and improvisation. And the silence too… I am not a musicologist or a historian. I am a singer (cantadeira) who talks about fado as if it were a friend. This text was the basis for a presentation at the seminar “Processos composicionais na música brasileira – a musicalidade no lundum e no fado, na chula e no samba” (5ª Mostra de Música Leão do Norte, Sesc Santo Amaro – Recife, October 2014).I will provide some examples of music throughout the text. I am accompanied by António Queiroz, Nuno Siqueira (Portuguese guitar) and Rui Silveira (guitar) in a “rehearsal mode”. I warmly thank both of them. I also thank Rodrigo Lacerda for his support recording the videos

FAdo and GUItar: tools for automata manipulation and visualization

Abstract. FAdo is an ongoing project which aims to provide a set of tools for symbolic manipulation of formal languages. To allow highlevel programming with complex data structures, easy prototyping of algorithms, and portability (to use in computer grid systems for example), are its main features. Our main motivation is the theoretical and experimental research, but we have also in mind the construction of a pedagogical tool for teaching automata theory and formal languages. For the graphical visualization and interactive manipulation a new interface application, GUItar, is being developed. In this paper, we describe the main components of the FAdo system as well as the basics of the graphical interface and editor, the export/import filters and its generic interface with external systems, such as FAdo.

The choreography of longing: songs, screens and space in Carlos Saura’s 'Fados'

Carlos Saura’s 2007 film Fados follows the director’s earlier works Flamenco (1995) and Tango (1998) by showing musicians performing a vernacular music genre while accompanied by dancers. This approach to Portugal’s ‘national music’ attracted consternation from fans of the genre due to the fact that, unlike flamenco and tango, fado does not have an associated dance form. For some commentators, Saura also took liberties by including a number of musicians from outside Portugal (including Spain, Africa and Latin America) and mixing traditional fado forms with other music genres (including rock, hip hop and Cape Verdean morna). Despite these potential distractions, Saura seems keen to depict the history of fado from its tangled roots to its present position as an urban folk music par excellence, a music that both evokes and inhabits the contemporary Portuguese city (in particular, the city of Lisbon). Through evocative use of light and shadow, Saura offers up a series of highly ‘photographic’ scenes in which fado’s poetics of urban haunting are made prominent. Therefore, rather than critiquing the director for his ‘inauthentic’ depiction of fado, I respond to Saura’s provocation by considering his film as a strategy for setting fado’s poetics of time, space and history in a new light. Taking a cue from the use of choreography and urban tableaux in the film, I offer a spatial reading of Fados that draws upon the work of Michel de Certeau and Henri Lefebvre. I argue that the film makes visible a ‘production of space’ that complements existing fado mythography

On the Application of Generic Summarization Algorithms to Music

Several generic summarization algorithms were developed in the past and successfully applied in fields such as text and speech summarization. In this paper, we review and apply these algorithms to music. To evaluate this summarization's performance, we adopt an extrinsic approach: we compare a Fado Genre Classifier's performance using truncated contiguous clips against the summaries extracted with those algorithms on 2 different datasets. We show that Maximal Marginal Relevance (MMR), LexRank and Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) all improve classification performance in both datasets used for testing.Comment: 12 pages, 1 table; Submitted to IEEE Signal Processing Letter

Guitare portuguaise et fado

The fado is a love and nostalgie song which was born in the poor neighbourhoods of Lisbon, between the 18th and the 19th century. Since the 19th century, the instrument called Portuguese guitar (with plucked and strummed strings) usually accompanies the fado. It is a six-course guitar, where the table has a sound-hole and the fingerboard presents from 17 to 22 frets and a fanshaped upper end. This guitar is coming from the classical cittern in his late evolution of the 17th century, the cittern called English guitar. The Portuguese Galráo and the British Simpson bring to the instrument successive modifications. The Portuguese guitar reached the countryside to become a dance instrument. In the 19th century, the singer called A Severa incarnates the big national myth of the fado. Daughter of one of the poorest neighboorhood of Lisbon, she was working in a "closed house" of the Mauraria (a neighbourhood of Lisbon). This talentuous singer was also linked to the circle of the bull courses (on a bourse) which the Lord Vimioso, in love with her, was the symbolic représentant. Julia Florista or A Cesarla are also among the famous figures of the femúe fado. The male fadist of that time was described like a social parasite who is living by one's wits. Later, he will live from small professions. At the end of the 19th century, the fado is sung in the kitchen-garden of Lisbon, along the roads followed by the bulls going to the arenas. It becomes a recreation song for banquets and weddings. Some very known singers and guitarists are Antonio Casaca, Caetano Calcinhas, Joáo Black. The golden period of the fado is situated around 1930-50. Since the thirties, the fado will slowly loose his instantaneous and spontaneous carácter for the professionalism, encouraged by the radio. It becomes a scenic song which Amalia Rodrigues and Alfredo Marceneiro are the more famous représentants.Le fado est une chanson d'amour et de nostalgie {saudade) qui est née dans les bas-quartiers de Lisbonne, à la charnière du 18e et du 19e siècles. A partir du 19e siècle, l'instrument qui accompagne le fado est la guitare portugaise (à cordes frappées et pincées). Sa table d'harmonie présente six choeurs ainsi qu'une ouïe ronde tandis que son manche est muni de 17 à 22 frettes et son cheviller se termine en éventail. Cette guitare est issue du cistre classique dans son évolution tardive du 17e siècle, le cistre appelé guitare anglaise. Le Portugais Galráo et l'Anglais Simpson lui apportent des modifications successives. La guitare portugaise atteint les campagnes pour animer la danse. La Severa, incarne au 19e siècle, le grand mythe national du fado. Fille de bidonvilles, elle travaillait dans une maison clause de la Mauraria (quartier de Lisbonne). Cette chanteuse de talent était aussi liée au milieu de la tauromachie équestre, dont le Comte de Vimioso, épris d'elle, était le symbole. Julia Florista ou la Cesarla sont d'autres femmes fadistes illustres. Le fadiste masculin de cette époque est décrit comme un parasite social, qui vit d'expédients et d'harnac. Plus tard, il pratiquera des petits métiers. A la fin du 19e siècle, le fado est chanté dans les jardins potagers de Lisbonne, situés le long des chemins empruntés par les taureaux qui étaient acheminés vers les arènes. Il devient alors un chant de divertissement pour les banquets et les noces. Des noms de chanteurs et guitaristes se détachent tels Antonio Casaca, Caetano Calcinhas, Joâo Black. L'âge d'or du fado se situerait dans les années 1930-50. A partir des années 30, le fado va peu à peu perdre son caractère instantané et spontané au profit du professionalisme, encouragé par la radio. Il évolue alors vers la scène dont Amalia Rodrigues et Alfredo Marceneiro sont les représentants les plus illustres

Small NFAs from Regular Expressions: Some Experimental Results

Regular expressions (res), because of their succinctness and clear syntax, are the common choice to represent regular languages. However, efficient pattern matching or word recognition depend on the size of the equivalent nondeterministic finite automata (NFA). We present the implementation of several algorithms for constructing small epsilon-free NFAss from res within the FAdo system, and a comparison of regular expression measures and NFA sizes based on experimental results obtained from uniform random generated res. For this analysis, nonredundant res and reduced res in star normal form were considered.Comment: Proceedings of 6th Conference on Computability in Europe (CIE 2010), pages 194-203, Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal, June/July 201

Automata Serialization for Manipulation and Drawing

GUItar is a GPL-licensed, cross-platform, graphical user interface for automata drawing and manipulation, written in C++ and Qt5. This tool offers support for styling, automatic layouts, several format exports and interface with any foreign finite automata manipulation library that can parse the serialized XML or JSON produced. In this paper we describe a new redesign of the GUItar framework and specially the method used to interface GUItar with automata manipulation libraries

Fado as an added value for tourism in Lisbon

This work-project is about the impact of Fado in the development of the tourism in Portugal and, more specifically, in Lisbon. It makes sense because it is thought that Fado is not being explored the way it should to have the best contribution possible for tourism. For the development of this work we first wrote about Fado’s history, cultural tourism and then interviewed several tourists that were attending Fado performances. These interviews made us conclude tourists appreciated a lot their visit to “Casas de Fado” and that Fado is an important asset for Portuguese tourism development. Because of this conclusion, some suggestions are made to better promote Fado in Portugal and worldwide

Iberia, October 5, 1992

This is the concert program of the Iberia performance on Monday, October 5, 1992 at 8:00 p.m., at the Tsai Performance Center, 685 Commonwealth Avenue. Works performed were "Siete canciones populares españolas" by Manuel de Falla, Three "Tangos Brasileiros" by Ernesto Nazareth, Estrella é Lúa Nova by Heitor Villa-Lobos, Ó Pallida Madona by H. Villa-Lobos, Viola Quebrada by H. Villa-Lobos, Cançāo do Poeta do Século XVIII by H. Villa-Lobos, Xango by H. Villa-Lobos, "Cuatro madrigales amatorios" by Joaquín Rodrigo, and "Poema en forma de canciones" by Joaquín Turina. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund