The Art of Amália Rodrigues

Rodrigues, Amália

album cover

The Voice of Portugal, Loud and Clear

This is a Pablo Neruda poem with wings. This is singing as a kind of journey into the soul, leading deeper than you might initially want to go. This is the coyness of Ella, the hurt of Billie Holiday, the brooding of João Gilberto. Amália Rodrigues stops you in your tracks, flattens time, fills the air around you with a fine weepy mist and then, having rearranged your molecules, sends you on your sad way home.

You need not understand Portuguese to be transported by Rodrigues (1920–1999), the singer who defined and expanded the pensive and rueful style known as fado, which translates as "destiny." It's music that looks back on loves that might have been, with the singer usually helped by guitar and Portuguese mandolin. Bypassing the brain entirely and speaking instead directly to the heart, the singer and actress created an incredible trove of sentimental, nostalgic songs. Over a career of several decades, she came to symbolize fado, and many Portuguese poets wrote lyrics tailored for her.

This anthology does a good job of collecting highlights from Rodrigues's peak years in the 1950s, and includes several pieces recorded in 1970 on her final masterpiece, Com que voz. The set contains fado classics as well as striking versions of Portuguese popular songs. The song that opens the set, "Nem as paredes confesso," offers a clue about how Rodrigues operates. The mood is one of murmuring reflection as Rodrigues sings about how she intends to keep the name of her lover a secret. "You may beg, you may cry, but I won't even tell the walls who is the man I love," she sings. As the song nears its end, she adds a little aphorism that underscores her sense of the fleeting nature of pleasure: "Happiness," she sings solemnly, "is best enjoyed in secret."

Genre: World, Portugal
Released: 1998, Blue Note
Key Tracks: "Nem as paredes confesso," "Vou dar de beber a dor," "Coimbra," "Maria Lisboa."
Catalog Choice: Com que voz.
Next Stop: Madredeus: Ainda
After That: Misia: Canto.
Book Pages: 654–655