“Barco Negro” became a mainstay of Amália’s repertoire, which she recorded throughout her career in highly varied performances and remains one of the songs for which she is most internationally known. In international markets, the song sometimes stands in as iconic for the genre fado itself. “Barco Negro” has been a key part of the repertoire for some of the most internationally successful contemporary professional fadistas and remains a favorite for amateur and professional fado singers in Lisbon. When the young fadista Mariza broke onto the world music scene in the early 2002s, she covered “Barco Negro” on her debut album. In 2021, she would include it on an Amália tribute album, and perform it in a concert “tour” for New York’s Town Hall, live streamed from a recording studio in Lisbon, during a pandemic lockdown, her instrumentalists in black masks. The fado singer Lina, one of the newest arrivals on fado’s international scene, also included it on her 2020 debut album (on both compact disc and vinyl), produced by Raül Refree, ion arrangement for voice, piano and vintage analog electronic sound effects. (Refree had previously collaborated with the Spanish superstar vocalist Rosalía in 2017, on the debut album that launched her celebrity.)
In multiple covers, retakes, and new lyric substitutions, some artists have turned the table, critically reflecting back on the occluded original lyrics of “Māe Preta (Barco Negro).” He does not only weep in stylized son as Amália does, but as Silva, who examines queer, indigenous and Afro-Brazilian intersections in Matogrosso’s performance, points out, at the end, he actually cries. In this inconsolable weeping, Silva hears Matogrosso as “[making a] space for the black woman of this violent [colonial] history, for the loss and mourning put upon māe preta to be heard.” Alternatively, Lopes and Nogueira hear in Matogrosso’s break into sobs, a protest of Brazil’s dictatorial regime.
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