The musician Carminho, who performed at the Music of the World Festival in Sines, says that “fado is alive” and does not need the modern label.
“I don’t believe in modern fado, I believe in fado and fado is alive”, she told journalists at the end of the concert that filled the enclosure in the castle of Sines on Wednesday night.
Recognising that “there is contemporary fado”, the singer emphasises that this is the result of “an evolution of the fado that was done yesterday and, in turn, of what was done 50 years ago”.
“I think it is always a living path, which does not have a portal from which you pass and become a new fado or a modern fado”, she distinguishes.
“There are certain characteristics of songs that if they are changed too much they cease to be a musical genre. They may be very relevant and may have influences in various genres, but they cease to be the musical genre itself”, she maintains.
“I believe that fado is alive and therefore it is,” she emphasises.
Carminho – who made her debut at the Music of the World Festival in this 23rd edition – considers that fado has “a very important place” in world music, a category with which she does not agree “so much”, she begins by saying.
But she concedes: “In a way, what it describes is what the traditional song of each place is, how we also distinguish ourselves and define ourselves as a people, in a certain way, through music”.
And that “turns out to be very beautiful, to realise that each country is going to define itself in a very distinct way”, she admits.
And she goes even further: “I think it’s important, because it ends up counteracting a bit this flow of globality, which brings good things, but at the same time merges everything and makes everything very similar. And from the point of view, for example, of identity, I think it detaches. We end up having few roots when everything is a fusion”, she points out.
Three years after releasing her last album, “Portuguesa”, the singer says that “it is always a great emotion” to show this work in public, which “has been fantastically received”.
“It’s a disc that has a lot of tradition”, he summarises, considering that “it’s this tradition that also often attracts people to fado, to understand which people this is, which country this is”.
Carminho recognises that life has given her “unexpected joys” and that “it was a very happy moment” to play with the band Coldplay, during their recent (and sold out) tour in Portugal.
About the future, she says only: “I stopped wishing, to have that daring, so as not to spoil the flow of the planets.”
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