A Portuguese Love

Video Good day love, Says the roses on the window watching the sunrise Good day love, Just like the roses I always wait to see you And one day will be the day no matter where the wind runs The roses will gather to see me with my love Good day I always say when you come When your eyes pass by me And more I would say to the eyes of my dear If only for one time they would see mine And more I would say to the eyes of my dear If only for one time they would see mine Good day love, Says the roses on the window watching the sunrise Good day love, Just like the roses I always wait to see you And one day will be the day no matter where the wind runs The roses will gather to see me with my love From here I say everything of what I see At every move of yours on my street This is how I live and how I kiss you And this is my way of being yours This is how I live and how I kiss you And this is my way of being yours Good day love, Say the roses on the window seeing the sunrise Good day lov...

Video Hello friends and Zazzlers! Celebrating the Revolution with good regional folk Portuguese music! It's good and it's new! This band is called Galandum Galundaina . They adopted an old song that you can listen to in the video below. By the way, Michel Giacometti was French but lived in Portugal for 30 years. He gathered a lot of information about popular culture namely music. (It seems this new song from Galandum is, in fact, recreating two songs but I only got the lyrics for the first one.) If you don't understand the lyrics of this song, well, don't worry, I don't understand it completely because this group sings songs in "mirandês", a Portuguese language used in north-east Miranda do Douro. To know more about mirandese, please visit this site ! Their songs are about the rural way of life, quite poetic, funny, and high-spirited! You just have to love it! Nós tenemos muitos nabos... Nós tenemos muitos nabos a cozer nua panela, nun tenemos...

Idealist is the name of the new record of my favorite Portuguese fado singer, Cristina Branco! "In this new record “Idealist” Cristina Branco summarized a musical universe encompassing hundreds of great songs resulting from a seventeen years-long career that began in 1996, in Amsterdam. But we are not in the presence of another collection of songs, as extraordinary as the summary of so many sublime moments could be. “Idealist” is also a firm promise of continuation of her musical, poetical, and interpretative path, as proved by the three new tracks that are added to Cristina Branco’s “ideal list”: a traditional fado, “Na rua do silêncio (fado Estoril)”, and two original songs with lyrics by Mário Cláudio – “Se fores não chores por mim” and “Fado da partilha”. Three new songs carrying noticeably Cristina Branco’s personal brand and proving that the singer feels closer to fado today than she felt in other stages of her career." from Cristina Branco's  Official site...

Emmy Curl was born in 1990 in the northeast of Portugal. This girl grew up with a lot of interests in arts like music, painting, play, and photography. She began to produce by herself all her songs in her father's studio when she was only fifteen. To celebrate the first day of May I picked her version of Maio Maduro Maio. This song it's a cover. She made a great cover in my opinion. The author of this song is the great Zeca Afonso. It belongs to the Cantigas Do Maio which is the fifth album by this Portuguese protest singer. This is, maybe, his best album. Some of his most famous songs are in it, one of them becoming a revolutionary anthem - it's Grândola Vila Morena, the song picked to be the code used by the Armed Forces Movement to start what would become the Carnation Revolution. Zeca was an influential folk and political musician and he used his music and poetry as a tool of resistance against Oliveira Salazar's dictatorial regime. He was persecuted by the Fasc...

Hello friends and Zazzlers! A couple of weeks ago a young student contacted me and showed his project, a website he created to promote Portuguese music. Be an ambassador of your musical heritage by promoting your homeland music, Jean-Philippe wrote in his site. His full name is Jean-Philippe Costa and he lives in Washington. His parents are Portuguese but he was born in France. Nevertheless, he chose Portuguese music, not French music for his assignment. How cool! GWSB (George Washington University School of Business) students have developed websites for their digital marketing course. Google Analytics is being used to track the success of the students’ websites. At the end of the current spring semester, the student who gets the most unique visitors to the site will win a gift certificate to Founding Farmers – restaurants in Washington, D.C. Please do me a little favor. Take a moment of your time and visit Jean-Philippe's site . It's called Your music your culture...

Hello Zazzler and friends! This is a happy fado from Marco Rodrigues . The CD will be out next week so this is quite fresh yet! I will not translate the lyrics for you this time but I am sure you will love the voice and the cheerful guitars. I can tell you that it's kind of a warning the poet makes about women. They fall for those men who don't like them, and they run away from those who care! So the best thing is just not giving women that much attention and in that way, they will come running for you! He's telling the heart that's just the way it is, it's women's nature so the heart can't fight it! It's a sweet poem written by a poet born in the XIV century. He studied Law and unfortunately he drowned in River Tejo when he was 58 years old. Enjoy the music! Coração, olha o que queres Tão tirana e desigual  Sustentam sempre a vontade,  Que a quem lhes quer de verdade  Confessam que querem mal;  Se amor para elas não v...

A sample from the new record from one of my favorite Portuguese singers, Cristina Branco! The CD will be out next week and its title is ALEGRIA=JOY. This is good, oh, this is really good. Just listen! There's a song in English also.

Vamos Lá (Vídeo Oficial) *Letra* .TMN. - Som som feat. Mel do Monte It has been some time since I shared some Portuguese music on this blog. It feels like the right moment as I am so tired I could fall asleep at this precise moment! We had a Winter Hour change last weekend and I am still not feeling comfortable with it! It's 02:26 but I feel like it's 03:26 already or more. So this is what I think - let's go sleep! No more hard work! ...But before let's enjoy this song. It's from a Portuguese TMN commercial. TMN is one of our mobile communications operators. The purpose of this 2012 campaign of TMN company is to give voice to those who, despite adversity, believe that they can achieve their goals. This communication campaign's theme is "Portugal is calling. Come on! " This music was created by the Somsom project. Somsom project is Fred and João Barbosa (aka J-Wow/Lil’John). They are producers of the same big music Portuguese names like Orelha Negra ...

Last Monday I traveled to Coimbra. It's 50 km from where I live. A woman was handing out flyers and invited me to enter a new Coimbra's fado house. I was pleasantly surprised by the discovery. Fado ao Centro is a very nice place. I lived in Coimbra for several years and listen to fado several times but it never crosses my mind to hear fado of Coimbra at home. Why? What makes sense for me is to go out and see and hear fado in its own environment. Perhaps thinking of people like me, a group consisting of current or former students of Coimbra had the idea to create the Fado ao Centro, a space where people can listen to fado right in the middle of the historic city center and at very convenient times. Fado sessions occur during the day so even the older population more reluctant to leave home at night can go there and enjoy it. The room is cozy, with a sober but welcoming decoration. On one of its walls, there's a permanent exhibition on the history of fado and its interpret...

Velas e navios sobre as águas  - video I just wish you could understand the Portuguese language so you could understand and admire the beauty of the lyrics of this record. Not easy to translate, sometimes I do it for you but I don't think I can this time! But you can enjoy the great music. It's called Em busca das montanhas azuis - Searching for the blue mountains - and the name of the singer is Fausto. His inspiration has always been Portuguese history and very much one book called Pilgrimage. This book was written by Portuguese writer and explorer Fernão Mendes Pinto. Pilgrimage is Pinto's memoir of 20 years of travel back in the XVI century. He went as far as the middle and far east, Ethiopia, China, India, and Japan. He claimed to have been among the first group of Europeans to visit Japan. He wasn't an enthusiast of colonialism. He wrote that he was thirteen times made captive and seventeen times sold. It's hard to believe all he wrote! He got famous...

Video Instead of a Christmas song, I am sharing a beautiful and romantic song by Pablo Alborán and Carminho. Carminho is a Portuguese fado singer. Pablo is a young Spanish singer only 22 years old and he's the voice of the moment in Madrid. This duet is climbing music tops in Spain and in Portugal we're enjoying it too. It's not fado but the video was shot in Lisbon. "Fado" was also the name of the first work of Carminho released in 2009 in Portugal. It was considered by the British magazine "Songlines" one of the ten best albums released this year. Fado has now been published in the British market. Check this song and video from Carminho if you want to listen to some more of this incredible Portuguese voice and also watch a bit more of typical Lisbon. Si alguna vez preguntas el por que No sabré decirte la razón Yo no la sé Por eso y más Perdóname Ni una sola palabra más No más besos al alba Ni una sola caricia habrá Esto se a...

Portugal in photos - The Portuguese guitar by aportugueselove Fado Portuguese traditional music was declared today Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity at the 6th meeting of the International Committee of UNESCO held in Bali, Indonesia! These were the Criteria and timetable of inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity . Do you know what intangible heritage means? The following is the text of the Commitee Decision: Decision 6.COM 13.39  The Committee (…) decides that [this element] satisfies the criteria for inscription on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, as follows:  R.1: A musical and lyrical expression of great versatility, Fado strengthens the feeling of belonging and identity within the community of Lisbon, and its leading practitioners continue to transmit the repertory and practices to younger performers;  R.2: Inscription of Fado on Repre...

Watch this short film about Portuguese Fado , the song of Lisbon and Portugal, a song open to the sea and to the world. Take a look at Fado Museum site too! Next Saturday Portuguese will know if Fado makes the List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity! "This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.(Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, UNESCO, 2003, (Article 2, line 1) In June 2010 the Câmara Municipal de Lisboa presented the application of Fado to the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity (UNESCO) , a project created to implement an integrated safeguarding program for the heritage of Fado. This project’s m...

Today I bring you Alexandre Farto's artwork. Maybe you have heard a lot about street artist Banksy. Now it's time you meet Vhils. He's Portuguese. Curious? Right! Check Vhils site and you'll be amazed by what he has already created. Read what Lazarides Gallery wrote about him: Our youngest artist, the already prolific Portuguese-born Alexandre Farto's range spans from collage to portraiture. Of late he's taken to creating works purely from in situ materials, taking Vandalism as art to its logical ad absurdum conclusion. Advertising hoardings are torn to make fresh images, and plaster drilled away at until the remaining relief forms the work. He is, at the time of writing, experimenting with a cocktail of Quink ink and household bleach. But this is a long way from brutalism. Vhils art is poetic, complex, and ambitious, often focusing on the needs we have abandoned in favor of our wants, and the realization that trading pleasure back in for happines...

Autumn brings castanhas to Portuguese tables and I just love it. It's part of the Mediterranean diet at this time of the year. In Portugal, Greece, and Italy they are called a derivative of the Latin, Castanea. Portuguese make soups, desserts, and cakes with it. It's used in roasted meat plates as trimming. Do you know that they are low in calories and rich in vitamins? Roasted chestnuts are my favorite way to eat it! (Check how to do it later in this post!) Roasting requires cutting the fruit first with a knife or it will explode in the oven. The best ones are those we buy from street vendors. If you visit Portugal this time of the year don't miss it. Check this photo from a chestnut street vendor in 1966 - today it's still just the same. Sernancelhe . Chestnut from this region is said to be of great quality, very expensive, more than 3 euros/kg sometimes. Some advice if you're planning to buy it: skins should have a beautiful brown shine. They should also...

Video  - watch João Manuel Serra João Manuel Serra, was known as o Senhor do Adeus - the Lord of Goodbye. He died at age 80 last year's November, in Lisbon the city he loved. Every day he spent hours in the sun or rain watching the passing cars and waving to drivers near an area called the Saldanha. This gentleman was always very well-dressed and had a great passion for movies. He used to blog about the movies he watched on the weekend. He was an educated man coming from a wealthy family. He started waving at people after his mother's death. He was then alone in the world and this helped him to fight loneliness. It started as a joke but soon realized that this simple gesture made people happier and they smiled when they waved back...He was an icon of the city. The singer Marco Rodrigues has a fado called The Saldanha Man​​ on his latest album, Tantas Lisboas . It's a duet with Carlos do Carmo, a well-known fado singer, and with lyrics by Boss AC, a rapper, and mu...

Video   Gomo , Feeling Alive Some like it, others don't. If we have a mother tongue, why should we go and sing in a language that is not ours? So that our songs have more acceptance abroad? It's just a market strategy? But if we think about it for a second we'll see the most successful Portuguese singers abroad - like Mariza - sing in Portuguese, not in English. I have no CDs of Portuguese artists singing in English. I do not think they are better or worse than their foreign counterparts. I don't like it that much. I am also very picky when buying songs in Portuguese. But I have my favorites. The Portuguese are so used to consuming songs in English that no one seemed surprised when the Portuguese Football Federation chose a song by Black Eyed Peas - I gotta feeling - for the anthem National Football Team in the World Cup in South Africa...!!

From the MIC site:" With a brand new design, direct links to the most popular sections as well as easier and more attractive navigation the Portuguese Music Research & Information Centre hopes to contribute even more to the international visibility of Portuguese music. The renovated mic.pt website has new areas: the monthly "in focus" section as well as a direct connection with the "New Music Review Lounge", among others. Explore all the innovations."

Ana Moura is the celebrated Portuguese Fado singer that sang No expectations with Mick Jagger at Alavalade XXI Stadium, in Lisbon. She also performed in New York’s Carnegie Hall and that will go down in history as the first Portuguese act held there. Now she has been nominated Best Artist by Songlines , the magazine that looks at the world through its music. The winners, to be selected by the Songlines editorial team, will be published in the June issue (#76), on sale on April 29. Songlines Music Awards aim to recognize and celebrate the wealth of outstanding musical talent from across the world that has been reviewed in Songlines. Deolinda's, a Portuguese band, was 2010's Newcomer artist nominee. Explore the 50th sold-out issue of Songlines here . Watch and listen to Ana Moura's here . BEST ARTIST •Ana Moura (for the album Leva-me Aos Fados on World Village) •Cheikh Lô (for the album Jamm on World Circuit) •Femi Kuti (for the album Africa for Africa on Wrasse) •You...

Read more about it here . Homens da luta is a Portuguese comedy and musical street show group. Vasco Duarte (Falâncio) and Jel (Neto) are the creative teams. Their songs are a parody of the songs sung during and after the 1974 Revolução dos Cravos (Carnation Revolution) democratic revolution. The characters played are caricatures of the revolutionary singers and Portuguese people of that time. Homens da Luta can translate to The fighting men. They won the 47th edition of the Festival da Canção that took place at the Teatro Camões in Lisbon. After the shared votes by an expert-regional jury and people phone voting on a 50/50 basis, Homens da Luta will represent Portugal at the 2011 Eurovision Song Contest in Dusseldorf. The endless debate started all over the internet after Homens da Luta victory. Some Portuguese just feel ashamed and find it pretty disgusting. Others say they are proud to be represented by A Luta é alegria. Some say that this song is not a winning song but is one...