The last time we were in Lisbon we tried to visit the Fado Museum twice.  The first time there was a power outage and the museum was closed.  The next day the power was back but when power came back it crashed the computers.  Much of the museum is interactive where you can listen to different Fado artists or research their discographies, concert programs and posters.  This time we made it.

Fado is a Portuguese musical style that expresses deep emotion and longing.  It developed in the early 1800s.  The themes are loss, yearning, fate, sea life and the daily struggles of the poor.  It was sung in taverns or “Fado Houses.”  I was interested in it for a couple of reasons, that it influenced Cape Verdi music, which combines it with West African and Angolan motifs and because of the instrument it is played on, the Portuguese Guitar.  While the exhibits about the singers, their advertising posters and sampling their music interested me it was the unique Guitar was what really caught my attention.

The Portuguese Guitar is not the most famous Portuguese instrument, the Ukulele is.  The word Ukulele is Hawaiian.  It means “jumping flea” for the movement of fingers across the strings.  But the instrument, itself, came to Hawaii with Portuguese workers imported to work in the sugar fields.  The Portuguese name for the instrument is the Machete.  I was wondering if the machete was used in Fado.  It is not.  While both evolved from a common ancestor the Uke is used for joyful music while the Guitar is used for sad music.

The Portuguese Guitar is pear shaped, somewhat like a Lute or Oud, but like a guitar it has a flat back.  It has twelve strings metal set in groups of two.  Its tuning mechanism was b from the English guitar which arrived with seamen and merchants.  It is a modified watch winding mechanism and the instrument is tuned using a watch key and is played with finger picks.  It is fretted and at the end of the fingerboard the tuning mechanism fans out.  Then there is a scroll.

After our visit to the Museum we walked across a square to have some “pastel de nata” a Portuguese pastry a flaky crust filled with custard spiced with cinnamon.  It is sort of the national tart.  Since we wanted to be back on the ship before the kids joined us, we opted for a short, half hour tuk tuk ride through the historic Alfama district. 

Lisbon’s Tuk Tuks are electric and quiet but bumpy on the cobblestone streets.  I realized when I got in that I was too tall for this as a sightseeing vehicle.  The canopy was too low and I had to scrunch down and lean over to get a good look out.  The last time we were here we took a tuk tuk for three hours and I think it had a little more headroom. 

What struck me the most was the street art and the tilework on the building walls.

Our half hour turned out to be 45 minutes because for the first 15 minutes we were stuck in a traffic jam and couldn’t go 3 blocks.  Some of the streets had been closed off on Sunday.   As it worked out, we could have taken a three hour tour and gotten back before we were joined by the kids, but that is a topic for the next post.