Discovering Amalia Rodrigues and Portugal

Call it Fate or Fado – it’s a national music obsession in Portugal and the voice that has reigned supreme from the mid 1940s till this day is the late great Amália’s. I bought two CD’s home from our travels to the northern medieval city of Guimarães recently and we listened to them the very day we returned. It has been my experience that a great singer transcends all language barriers and one need not understand a single word of Portuguese to appreciate the vibrancy and soulful quality of her voice. Her songs, some written especially for her by poets, deal with love and loss and the human condition. Her plaintive voice recalls Portugal where Bob had attended a conference of the European Society for Aesthetics and I was just tagging along.

We started and ended our trip in Porto — the second largest city in Portugal arriving on the Feast Day of St. John the Baptist which was a public holiday. The Cathedral Square area where we stayed was full of people carrying plastic hammers which they playfully tapped on each other’s heads. We got a few taps ourselves! The town was alive with all-night singing and dancing, processions, bonfires and fireworks.

The Douro river flows through Porto and the city is full of lovely monuments, cathedrals, taverns, squares and a central railway station with impressive blue and white tiles that trace the history of transportation in the country. Many churches and building have elaborate tile decorations and wrought-iron features on balconies and gates. Port wine takes its name from  Porto, and the Douro Valley is where port grapes are grown, and all the great port wine makers are based in Porto.

Guimarães, where the conference was held, is 30 miles north east of Porto. It’s claim to fame is that it was the first capital of Portugal and the birthplace of Alfonso Henriques, the first king of the country. It’ s also the 2012 European Capital of Culture. Portugal was once a leading colonial power and some of the greatest navigators of all time who discovered and charted maps of the world are associated with the country – Bartholomew Dias, Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco Da Gama to name a few. Some believe that Christopher Columbus was Portuguese, though his birth place is highly contested.

There are remnants of the Portuguese presence across Asia — Goa in India, Malacca in West Malaysia and Macao in the Pearl River Delta near Hong Kong. Growing up in Singapore, Portuguese-influenced Malacca was a popular tourist destination. Some words from Portugal have seeped into the Malay tradition – “mentagah” meaning butter in both Portuguese and Malay and “gereja” meaning church in both languages. I’m sure there are many other words that have Portuguese origin. I noticed those two immediately — words I’ve known from childhood suddenly get connected to a place one happens to visit decades later. We truly live in a global village.

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