The voice. That's the first thing to notice about Portuguese fado, the dramatic, tear-stained music born many generations ago - perhaps in the 1820s, but some claim earlier - on the crowded streets of ...

With her mahogany-rich voice, impassioned performances and striking looks, the Portuguese fado singer Mariza has, in a few short years, become a reigning diva on the world music scene. She has blown ...

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). It’s nearing midnight in Alfama, Lisbon’s oldest neighbourhood, when a lady in black steps into a taverna. The bar staff scurry to turn ...

Ana Moura says she didn't decide to become a fadista, a singer of the fervent, longing-filled Portuguese music called fado, or fate. "Fado chose me," says the lush-voiced Portuguese singer, who brings ...

Fado is the music of Portugal, a haunting, emotional style intimately bound up with that tiny country's history and seagoing soul. Yet on her latest recording, Mariza, fado's greatest contemporary ...

In any country, Mariza would command attention. Her short blond hair is set in rows above a face that could be described as impish even though her songs emphasize a sense of deep longing. Playful ...

In recent years, the melancholic Portuguese folk music known as fado has gotten a lot of play around the world. Many of the singers have stylized their songs to suit the tastes of an international ...

ON SULTRY summer nights, the passionately mournful fado music drifts out of bars and nightclubs in Lisbon. It’s urban music of the Portuguese soul, longing for lost love and lost chances. A singer, ...

As the first woman to professionally take up the Portuguese guitar, Lisbon’s Marta Pereira da Costa can fairly be described as a musical pioneer who has opened up new territory for female musicians.

Ramana Vieira of Vacaville, an internationally known singer of fado, a kind of Portuguese folk song, usually melancholic and nostalgic, calls the music “a window into the soul” of Portuguese people.