Fado is world heritage

Fado the song of Lisbon is now too a song of the world.
Fado is a portuguese music genre and it was added last saturday  (27th November 2011) to Unesco's list of of World's Intangible Cultural Heritage.

On its website, UNESCO describes Fado as the”urband popular song of Portugal,” stating

"Fado is a performance genre incorporating music and poetry widely practised by various communities in Lisbon. It represents a Portuguese multicultural synthesis of Afro-Brazilian sung dances, local traditional genres of song and dance, musical traditions from rural areas of the country brought by successive waves of internal immigration, and the cosmopolitan urban song patterns of the early nineteenth century. Fado songs are usually performed by a solo singer, male or female, traditionally accompanied by a wire-strung acoustic guitar and the Portuguese guitarra – a pear-shaped lute with twelve wire strings, unique to Portugal, which also has an extensive solo repertoire. The past few decades have witnessed this instrumental accompaniment expanded to two Portuguese guitars, a guitar and a bass guitar. Fado is performed professionally on the concert circuit and in small ‘Fado houses’, and by amateurs in numerous grass-root associations located throughout older neighbourhoods of Lisbon. Informal tuition by older, respected exponents takes place in traditional performance spaces and often over successive generations within the same families. The dissemination of Fado through emigration and the world music circuit has reinforced its image as a symbol of Portuguese identity, leading to a process of cross-cultural exchange involving other musical traditions."

Fado is about the lusitan soul, it calls for a longing feeling called saudade, a word that has no translation and it's unique in the portuguese language. Sometimes it can be a bit blue and bring us to tears but fado is not always sad or mournful, tehre are some happy songs too.

The sound of Fado is unique due too the sound of our unique portuguese guitarr:

There are too genious of this kind of guitarr that make the music so wonderful, onde of them was Carlos Paredes:

As singers of fado our symbol of Fado is Amalia Rodrigues, but nowadays there are too several good singers like Mariza, Ana Moura, Carminho, Cuca Roseta, Camané, Carlos do carmo, Kátia Guerreiro, Raquel Tavares, Mafalda Arnauth...

Here's some of my best Fado songs, take a listen:

1- Mariza singing "Gente da Minha Terra", it means "people from my country"

2- Mariza singing "Rosa Branca"

3- Ana Moura singing Rumo ao Sul