the last book I ever read (Amália Rodrigues’s Amália at the Olympia (33 1/3 Europe), excerpt four)

from Amália Rodrigues’s Amália at the Olympia (33 1/3 Europe) by Lila Ellen Gray:

Fado, which translates literally as “fate,” developed in Lisbon in early decades of the 1800s as sung poetry voiced from the city’s margins, from its brothels, its prisons, its hardscrabble working-class neighborhoods, from its dispossessed. It rapidly gained favor amongst the more well-to-do and elites and traversed multiple strata of Lisbon society. Fado reflects a convergence of multiple influences and styles, most likely Afro-Brazilian, European, and regional Portuguese. While fado’s origins still remain fiercely contested by many fado musicians and fans in Portugal, scholars make persuasive arguments for its hybrid roots, particularly for the influence of Afro-Brazilian musical and dance forms the fofa and the lundum and from a form of fado that was danced in Brazil. When Napoleon’s troops invaded Portugal in 1807, members of the Portuguese royal court fled to Brazil, bringing many with them and temporarily settling in Rio de Janeiro; the number of people who fled Portugal, may have been as high as 14,000. The Portuguese court remained in Brazil for over a decade, and when they returned, they brought musical and dance styles back with them to Lisbon. The development of fado was likely also influenced by the song genre of the modinha which circulated in Brazil and then became popular in Lisbon.