The Question of a Voice: With What Voice Will I Cry My Sad Fado

Abstract

Fado is a traditional Portuguese music genre whose lyrics are emotionally rich, often referring to fate, love, longing, death, abandonment and helplessness. By singing these feelings a national identity is reinforced, either by the transgenerationality of the pain portrayed in these songs, or by evoking unique and untranslatable Portuguese words, such as Saudade (homesickness with melancholy) or Fado (fate in a sad and insurmountable way). In this manuscript, the universe of Fado is described and linked to a psychoanalytic meaning, through analyzing the relation between Saudade and depressiveness, what feels like to be a Fadista or the sublimation of trauma through Fado, as a song, that has been inscribed by UNESCO, on the Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2011.