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Fado, a type of Portuguese singing, traditionally associated with pubs and cafés, that is renowned for its expressive and profoundly melancholic character.
The singer of fado (literally, “fate”) speaks to the often harsh realities of everyday life, sometimes with a sense of resignation, sometimes with the hope of resolution. The music is performed by either a female or a male vocalist, typically to the accompaniment of one or two guitarras (10- or 12-string guitars), one or two violas (6-string guitars), and perhaps also a viola baixo (a small 8-string bass viola). Most of the repertoire follows a duple metre (usually with four beats to a measure), with a text arranged in quatrains or in any of several other common Portuguese poetic forms. Until the mid-20th century many fado performances featured a significant element of improvisation. Inevitably enriched with an array of emotive bodily gestures and facial expressions, fado aims—and indeed, is required—to evoke a penetrating sense of saudade (roughly, “yearning”).
There are two distinct styles of fado, the older of which is associated with the city of Lisbon and the younger with the north-central Portuguese city of Coimbra.
The Portuguese guitar or Portuguese guitarra is a plucked string instrument with twelve steel strings, strung in six courses of two strings. It is one of the few musical instruments that still uses Preston tuners. It is most notably associated with the musical genre known as Fado.
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