Everything Is Fado - Portuguese Music about Longing & Fate
The only Portuguese words I knew before our trip were boa noite, meaning “goodnight” or “good evening.”
Not from a class or a guidebook - from Love Actually. You might remember the scene: Colin Firth’s character, Jamie, stands nervously in a Portuguese restaurant, speaking in broken Portuguese to confess his love to Aurelia. It’s tender and awkward and honest - the way love often is. His halting “Boa noite” carries all the weight of someone trying to express something deeper than words can reach.
That memory came to me as we wandered the steep streets of Lisbon, searching for O Corrido – Casa de Fado, tucked in the historic Alfama neighborhood. My husband, Dave, navigated the winding, one-way cobblestone streets in a rental car that had no business being there. These streets were not built for modern vehicles - let alone tourists. We parked somewhere that may or may not have been legal, hoping our car would still be there when we returned. Tow trucks, after all, seemed physically impossible on those inclines.
We passed doorways glowing with the sounds of laughter and music, people gathered around tiny tables, balconies hung with laundry and light.
Inside O Corrido, the world shifted pace. The room was intimate - candlelit tables pressed close, the kind of space where conversation naturally softens. A small stage held two guitarists: one playing the 12-string Portuguese guitar, the other a classical guitar. Between them, one singer at a time would stand to perform - no microphone, no amplification, just voice and air.
Each set offered a new vocalist, each carrying their own story.
The music filled the room - raw, deliberate, and deeply human.
Even without understanding the words, you could feel the weight of them. The Portuguese language itself seemed to hum with emotion, each vowel stretched with longing, each phrase like a sigh.
Later, during the final song, the performers moved to the corners of the room. We were surrounded - voices, strings weaving together until the sound became something physical, something you could feel it surround you.
During that final song, a female performer grabbed a small, square drum - the adufe. Its sound was soft but grounding, a rhythmic heartbeat beneath the voices.
I later learned that the adufe is a traditional Portuguese frame drum, most often played by women. Historically, it was used in rural gatherings and celebrations, a remnant of ancient rituals where women were the keepers of rhythm - much like what Layne Redmond writes about in When the Drummers Were Women - a book I have been reading on and off for a few years. The adufe’s two goatskin heads and square frame symbolize balance - earth and sky, life and death, the pulse of community. Hearing it that night, held confidently in a woman’s hands, felt like witnessing that lineage come alive - the steady rhythm carrying centuries of women’s voices beneath the songs of fate and longing.
It was during one of those moments that I opened my ChatGPT app to understand what I was hearing.
These lines appeared on my screen - verses echoing the heart of Fado:
“Mais um tempo e sem dizer...
Almas vencidas, noites perdidas, sombras visadas...
Namoraria, cantofias, chora-guitarras...
Amor e ciúme, cinzas e lume, dor e pecado...
Tudo isto existe, tudo isto é triste, tudo isto é dor...”
Translated:
“A bit more time and without saying...
Defeated souls, lost nights, haunted shadows...
Love affairs, whispered songs, guitar laments...
Love and jealousy, ashes and fire, pain and sin...
All this exists, all this is sad, all this is pain...”
And then the phrase that captures everything:
“Tudo isto é fado.”
Everything is Fado.
The music we heard that night embodied that truth. It was centuries of emotion distilled into melody: longing, sorrow, devotion, and joy.
Later, a local told me that Fado is something you only go to a few times a year. “It’s too emotional,” he said. “It takes everything out of you.”
That sentence has stayed with me.
As a board-certified music therapist, I think about emotional expression through music every day.
However, in my own culture, we often try to tidy it up, soften it, make it safe. Fado doesn’t do that. It lets emotion take up the whole room. It invites you to stay in the ache. And, as I was told, the lyrics don’t hold back on the emotions.
I don’t come from a musical lineage like this - one where a city’s history, identity, and heart are sung generation after generation. I felt a kind of beautiful envy that night.
Because in Portugal, Fado music isn’t just something people perform; it’s something they carry.
Walking back through the rain after the final song, we passed open doorways and the faint echo of other voices singing somewhere in the distance. I thought about how important it is - especially for those of us who work with music professionally - to keep learning, listening, and immersing ourselves in sounds and traditions that are not our own.
To learn.
To reflect.
To understand.
To appreciate.
That night reminded me: music is one of the few languages that asks nothing of us except to feel.
