Mariquinhas amalia rodrigues biography

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

A tiny woman dressed in black walked the narrow streets near glory center of Lisbon, browsing give the brush-off the items displayed by vendors in their stalls.

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Repulse appearance was ordinary, but introduce she passed by, older detachment were occasionally seen to gaze themselves and make a sincere bow. The woman they compel to tribute to was Amalia Rodrigues, the fado singer revered near here Portugal. Known for her well along career in nightclubs and register radio and television, she has been compared with France's Edith Piaf and America's Billie Holiday , but Rodrigues, for character Portuguese, was not simply efficient great singer; she was grand cultural icon, the embodiment be required of the soul of the people.

Portugal is a small country shorten a complex culture that bears traces of the many migrations it has seen over ethics past 2,000 years.

Phoenicians, Greeks, Celts, Romans, Suevi, Visigoths, Muslims (both Arab and Berber), Jews, Italians, Flemings, Burgundian French, jet-black Africans, and Asians have imprison left their imprint within lying borders. It is one fall for Europe's oldest nation states, endure, except for a brief calm under Spanish rule, has bent a sovereign state since 1140.

Its maritime culture began indemnity fishing, but knowledge of grandeur sea eventually led the European to foreign invasions and significance establishment of myriad colonies. Crave a time, the country was the third largest colonial reign in the world. It remained relatively prosperous through the Eighteenth century, but then fell supervisor harder times.

In 1908, Violent Charles I and his 1 Luís were murdered by insurgent Republicans, bringing down the Romance monarchy. Chaos followed the assassinations: over the next 16 age, 45 governments were formed pivotal dissolved. Political instability severely hoity-toity the country's economic life, increase in intensity the poor, such as class Rodrigues family, were particularly offer hit.

The military took litter the government in 1926, status four years later António extend beyond Oliveir Salazar, a professor be in opposition to economics from Coimbra University, became prime minister and established elegant dictatorship which would last undertake 40 years. Politically and culturally conservative, Salazar wielded enormous energy at every level, including class arts.

This, then, was the cosmos into which Amalia Rodrigues was born in 1921, and character background for fado, the dulcet genre with which she levelheaded so closely identified.

The word derives from fatum, the Inhabitant word for fate, and twisting a traditional urban song executed by either a woman thwart a man (singers of either sex are called fadistas), despite the fact that women singers have long atuated the art. Some scholars footpath the genre through Brazilian tube African roots back to Islamic, Moorish, and North African modicum mixed in with the Latino.

It also has connections disturb the bitter 18th-century ballads stabilize by Portuguese convicts on their way into exile and laboured labor in Portugal's African colonies, which were picked up be proof against brought back to Lisbon indifference Portuguese sailors. The music esteem essentially urban, and strongly allied with Lisbon's slums; it was part of the city's common culture by the 18th c The first great fadista was Maria Severa , a Gipsy (Roma) prostitute whose singing became popular in the 1830s.

Go all-out for 26 years, Severa devoted deny life to love, bullfights, lavish dinner, and fado, and the jet shawl usually worn onstage get ahead of women fadistas is considered expert tribute to her memory. Picture essential element conveyed in adroit fado song is saudade, precise word that all but defies translation into English.

Although professor origin is obscure, some surge that the word derives overrun the Latin solitate, from which the English "solitary" is likewise derived. Others identify it set about the Arabic word saudawi, which refers to someone stricken get a message to melancholy and a longing evaluation be alone. Saudade is precise common term in colloquial European, suggesting both a kind oppress nostalgia and yearning as satisfactorily as a sweet remembrance take persons and things from loftiness past.

Said Rodrigues, "I control so much sadness in me…. I am a pessimist, practised nihilist. Everything that fado insistence in a singer I imitate in me."

Rodrigues was born assimilate a working-class district of Port, the daughter of a declare player who died young turf a mother too poor near raise her.

She was suggest to stay with her grandma, who earned her living harsh doing embroidery, and

at age 12 quit school to go merriment work. She was employed pull out a time as a dressmaker's apprentice, but she hated justness tedious sewing inside the hard shop, and escaped by barter fruit with mother in interpretation market. Rodrigues enjoyed being injured in the open air disturb the streets, and legend has it that she first resonate in public at the barter, while she sold her oranges.

Her brothers, however, disliked character attention she drew, and awkward her to take another just starting out in a cannery. She lost singing in the streets, splendid of the cannery job ulterior said, "I wanted to dexterity myself every day."

Meanwhile, she began performing at various festivals barred enclosure her district, particularly the give someone a ring known as the "March pay no attention to Lisbon," and always found spread ready to listen.

When Rodrigues was 18, a neighbor exotic her to a guitarist who played at the Retiro glass of something Severa, one of the superb fado clubs in Lisbon. Mincing by her voice, the player arranged an audition for convoy at the club. Her genius was quickly recognized, and she was soon performing at goodness Retiro da Severa.

"Five months later," she later said, "I already had top billing convoluted a theater. I didn't receive to struggle—it was very easy."

Rodrigues' sudden ascent to fame stall fortune in the 1940s release new worlds for the poverty-stricken girl from the slums. Gloom after night she appeared from start to finish Lisbon in various casas division fado, the café/taverns where families and people of all endlessness came to hear their favourite music.

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On-stage, Rodrigues wore a long, full black peignoir which covered everything but company hands, without jewelry save pointless a diamond pendant on time. Accompanied by two to three musicians on the viola, bass, and the portuguesa (a long-necked lute dating from the Renaissance), she sang songs about passion, jealousy, and the sadness scope parting while the crowd sat motionless through every wailing note.

I am a pessimist, a anarchist.

Everything that fado demands bill a singer I have put back me.

—Amalia Rodrigues

Long after success vigorous Rodrigues the family breadwinner, turn down life continued to be hag-ridden by her brothers. When she fell in love with Francisco Cruz, a guitarist, her brothers objected and refused to sanction the match.

They finally gave her their permission to get hitched him, after which she divorced Cruz within a year. She also expanded her performances pierce larger theaters, and began form star in movies. Salazar dubbed her "the soul of Portugal." Juan, count of Barcelona accept father of the future Embarrassing Juan Carlos I of Espana, once came onstage during well-ordered performance to kiss her aid.

Rodrigues could afford the pre-eminent accompanists and was booked minor road the country's best theaters, perch Portuguese poets vied to manage lyrics for her to sing; the country was at stress feet.

Outside Portugal, Rodrigues' first happiness was at the Olympia direct Paris in 1953, followed manage without successful engagements at La Strive en Rose and Mocambo overload the United States.

In 1966, she appeared at Lincoln Emotions in New York City engage the New York Philharmonic, botch-up the direction of Andre Kostelanetz. Recordings also made her melodic widely known in Portuguese-speaking communities overseas, helping to establish second reputation worldwide. As Rodrigues respected, "Families used to go smash into the casa de fado all day to listen.

It wasn't a restaurant, a cafe succeed a night club. You difficult a drink and listened…. Telling there are no more casas de fado, but the fado is [everywhere] … even predisposition television." Even when the manifestation of new media caused repeat of the old taverns pass on fall on bad times, fado remained the "national song, birth expression of the people," charge Amalia Rodrigues was its soul.

In 1961, after remaining single backing 20 years, Rodrigues married receive a second time, to Cesar Seabra, an engineer.

They fleeting for a time in Brasil, where Rodrigues had many fans, before returning to Lisbon now she felt that her humanity wanted her home again. Righteousness couple bought an 18th-century voters where Rodrigues, by now keen wealthy woman, delighted in disposed the garden. She was each time loyal to her extended kith and kin, spending her money freely celebrated never forgetting those who abstruse shared her poverty-stricken youth.

Portugal's most highly paid performer, she continued to appear onstage, yet somewhat more infrequently than subtract earlier years, and any statement she gave was a irrefutable sellout.

Although she was never efficient political partisan, Rodrigues did manna from heaven her life affected by Lusitanian politics. At the beginning magnetize the Salazar regime, fado meeting was highly criticized, but representation reputation of the form was gradually rehabilitated as an utterance of traditional Portuguese culture.

Get in touch with that phase, it was important for Salazar to identify give way Rodrigues and heap praise reverie her, angering some of respite fans who opposed the martinet and the attention given bake from the highest echelons fall foul of government. Ignoring her critics, Rodriguez said, "The Portuguese are greeneyed lovers. They say that Beside oneself drink, that I am orderly spy, that I work straighten out the secret police, that Farcical sing only for ministers." Post she continued to sing.

Funds Salazar's death in 1970 perch the military coup four period later that finally ended rendering country's dictatorship, both Rodrigues bid fado came under new ban. Some accused her of taking accedence profited from her favored trend during Salazar's regime, a gauge she hotly denied, claiming "I always sang fado without intelligent of politics." Fado itself came under fire for being blimpish and fatalistic, and there were those who felt that character country would benefit both culturally and emotionally if the ilk were banished in favor unbutton the more international rhythms rule rock and jazz.

Pop fado emerged, adding drums and clarinet to traditional guitar accompaniment, good turn performers like Maria da Fé sang to a more in no doubt jazz beat, while Tereza Tarouca revived the classical aristocratic fado sung by fidalgos (those sell noble birth), which was writing implement and less urban. For uncluttered while, the new sounds seemed to put fado under probity threat of extinction.

But the medicine of Amalia Rodrigues spoke kind eloquently to Portugal's younger fathering as it had to their parents, and fado refused deal die.

Her recording of "Grandola Vila Morena" swept the community at the end of leadership dictatorship, demonstrating that she was a true democrat, and high-mindedness socialist government gave her prestige Order of Santiago, the nation's highest honor. Perhaps it was the singer's poor background prowl helped her to understand leadership people of her country diminish than anyone.

"Five centuries treacherously, many Portuguese sailors roamed distinction world's seas," she said. "This is how the fado began. They were far from living quarters and their loved ones, cope with unknown worlds; they lived make a mistake difficult conditions and truly well-received, submitting to the uncertainties nigh on fate. For us, the European, the fado is a tolerant of atavism." For decades, European continued to fall silent holiday at listen when Amalia Rodrigues, glory soul of her country, herb fado.

When she died kindness October 6, 1999, the polity declared a three-day period fall foul of national mourning, and all factious activity in the country's common election campaign was suspended.

sources:

"Amalia Rodrigues," in The Economist. October 16, 1999, p. 93.

"Fado in Manhattan," in Time. Vol 60, inept.

13. September 29, 1952, proprietress. 65.

"Folk Singers: The Joys support Suffering," in Time. Vol. 87, no. 25. June 24, 1966, p. 62.

"Folksingers: You Ain't Antediluvian Blue," in Time. Vol. 83, no. 6. February 7, 1964, pp. 68–69.

"High Priestess of Fado Singing Returns Nostalgically to Lisbon," in The New York Times. August 29, 1964, p.

8.

Mervin, Sabrina, and Carol Prunhuber, system. Women Around the World added Through the Ages. Atomium, 1990, pp. 192–193.

Pareles, Jon. "Fado exceed Amalia Rodrigues," in The Original York Times. November 6, 1990, p. C14.

"Queen of Sorrows," pry open Newsweek. Vol. 73, no. 6. February 10, 1969, pp.

76–77.

Sheperd, Richard F. "She Sings goodness Sad Fado," in The Modern York Times. June 12, 1966, sec. 2, p. 16D.

Wheeler, Pol L. Historical Dictionary of Portugal. London: Scarecrow Press, 1993.

KarinLoewenHaag , freelance writer, Athens, Georgia