Hitler bombs Guernica and invades Poland. In Portugal, Salazar comes to power; in Spain, Franco. Salazar demands that all fado singers carry identity cards. Everywhere there are allied and nazi spies, looking for supporters and traitors.
It was at this time, in 1939 that the legendary fadista Amália Rodriguez made her debut at the fado house Retiro da Severa.
By then, fado had left the streets and taverns where it had begun and had entered the bourgeois venues. Amalia quickly became the most original and celebrated artist in the genre, an international star who performed everywhere, from opera houses to Broadway and Hollywood. But the government in Portugal had nothing good to say and Salazar always derided her as ‘the little creature.’
Here, Amalia sings Povo que lavas no rio (“The people who wash in the river”).
The washer women are poor and the song, like many of hers, becomes political by the very fact of her singing it, for she sang many anti-fascist poets, besides Portuguese classics, like Camoens.
“Povo que lavas no rio
Que talhas com o teu machado
As tábuas do meu caixão.
Pode haver quem te defenda
Quem compre o teu chão sagrado
Mas a tua vida não………”
— Excerpt from Povo Que Lavas No Rio,
Lyrics by Pedro Homem de Mello
Music by Alain Oulmain (a Franco-Portuguese anti-fascist poet whom she helped set free after the Portuguese secret police arrested him)
“People who wash in the river/ Who with their axes hew/ The boards of my coffin/ There are those who value you…….”
Yet, of the poverty in which she grew up, she was always dismissive:
“We never complained about life. Sure, we knew there were people who were different from us, otherwise there would be no revolutions. But I never heard anybody talk about that. It’s the privileged classes who discuss that type of thing, not the poor. And, after all is said and done, there’s also class discrimination among the poor. We were like social outcasts.”
Of God she said, “Even if he doesn’t exist, I believe in Him,”
“Even if he doesn’t exist, I believe in Him,”
I just had a profound experience. Listen to the podcast of the neurological anatomist* who observed her own brain’s destruction and then came back (eight years of recovery) to tell us about how our brains work and what it may mean. This is amazing stuff. (But only perhaps for those who have some contact with their right brains.)
– NonE
* “Jill Bolte Taylor was in her late 30s when a blood vessel exploded in her brain. The irony? Taylor is a neurological researcher. She’s made a complete recovery since — and says the experience provided wisdom and insight.”
Nice radical lyrics :P. As a fan of (Brazillian-)portuguese, here’s the translation for the second half of that paragraph:
There might be someone to defend you,
someone to buy you your (sacred) land,
but not your life.
(My paraphrasing: Nobody else will defend you–‘cuz nobody is that altruistic. Nobody will buy you–‘cuz that’s not really possible–ie. you alone control your own mind.)
Re: “we knew there were people who were different from us, otherwise there would be no revolutions”
That’s a little troubling. Even though they were otherwise satisifed with their lives, merely looking at others and wanting to be like/better than the others, was reason enough to revolt. What does that say about happiness and contentment and the validity of (their) revolution?
Thanks for the lyrics….very nice
I am not sure exactly what she’s referring to in those words so it’s unfair to draw conclusions.
But I’m sure if people sense great disparities and inequities that will itself be cause enough (validity, as you it) to revolt.
Hrm.. my translation was wrong. Here is what I believe to be a better one:
There might be someone who defends you,
who buys your sacred land,
but your life–that he cannot buy.
This makes a little more sense. The snake-oil selling government will defend you (or claim to defend you); they’ll buy your precious land away from you (possibly for the sake of the aforementioned carrot). But they can’t take (buy) your life away from you. Which is a little ironic since the previous sentence said that the others (who worked for the oppressive fascist state) were effectively killing her–perhaps literally, or perhaps “mere” oppression by the Portuguese secret police. Those were tumultuous times–the spanish-civil-war years.