Listening Post 379. In 2005, Lina gave a preview of her own career as a fado singer by playing Amália Rodrigues in a theater musical based the great fado diva’s life. On her 2020 album, Lina_Raül Refree, she reinterpreted Amália’s songs, exchanging fado’s traditional acoustic guitars for minimalist backing of mostly piano and synths; a few purists complained, but the album won a host of prizes. On Fado Camões, her newest release, Lina is still experimenting—and also reaching way back, marrying fado to the works of Luís Vaz de Camões, the sixteenth-century poet who is to Portuguese literature and language as Shakespeare is to English. Best known for Os Lusíadas (The Lusiads), the epic poem about Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India, Camões also wrote hundreds of lyric poems. Lina looked for verses suited to fado’s cadences and assembled an able crew for her expedition. Music was borrowed from traditional fados, or newly composed by singer-songwriter Amélia Muge or by Lina herself. The 12 tracks show Camões addressing themes relevant today—childhood, change, love, loss. They also reveal conflicting sentiments, suggesting an era in which passion was often squeezed between richer language and shorter lives. In Se Saudade Morrerei ou Não (Whether I Die of Heartache or Not, video 1), Lina exquisitely evokes sorrow and acceptance in metaphors that also bring to mind an explorer at sea. She probes competing emotions in O Que Temo e o Que Desejo (What I Fear and What I Desire, video 2) and in Desencontro (Disharmony, video 3). And she balances an agonizing approach-avoidance dilemma with pure vocals and spare arrangement in Que Ninguem Me Veja Ver-vos (So No One Sees Me Seeing You, video 4). The unadorned title of Cançao (Song, video 5), heralds the album’s most timeless track, an ode to beauty. Like Vasco da Gama rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Lina’s career is a voyage of discovery, and it looks like another epic. (Galileo MC)
Lina_: Fado Camões
Lina Rodrigues: Vocals
Justin Adams: Producer, percussion, guitar, programming
Pedro Viana: Portuguese guitar
John Baggott: Piano, Fender Rhodes, Moog, bass, drum programming
Se de Saudade Morrerei ou Não / Whether I Die of Heartache or Not
Lyrics: Luís Vaz de Camões/Music: Lina
(From the Portuguese lyrics)
Whether I die of heartache or not
My eyes will relate the truth about me
It is for them I enroll, daring the oceans that match the emotions
I bear in my soul the waters that vainly force me to cry
If they are of the sea, they are also of living
I discharge my cares; if the power of the waters bears me, I bear them
All of them sadden, all are of salt, and yet this melting feels Elysian
Run, sweet waters, in you I delight
The pain beneath notice I bear in my heart
O Que Temo e o Que Desejo / What I Fear and What I Desire, feat. Rodrigo Cuevas
Lyrics: Luís Vaz de Camões, adaptation by Amélia Muge/Music: Fado Triplicado by José Marques
(From the Portuguese and Spanish lyrics)
In some way it comes about, with what I fear and what I desire
That I always meet with what I fear, and never with what I covet
Life and soul I committed myself, to Fortune in good faith
It will deliver me a death, much as it promises in life
Since you inflict such grief, you aim being my death
I am happy in my final breath, since in death you give me life
Eyes, what is your brief, given you’ve dispatched me
When in my death you watch me, bringing me back to life?
Wounded mortally at your sight, though that’s hardly what you want
But if it’s death you grant me, dying is sheer delight
Eyes, accept this proof, given you’ve dispatched me
When in my death you watch me, bringing me back to life
Desencontro / Disharmony
Lyrics: Luís Vaz de Camões/Music: Fado Corrido, Traditional
(From the Portuguese lyrics)
When love reigns in two hearts, it weaves such blunders
That from compatible desires it produces opposites
It lives in us equally, but being so unsound
It takes you off when I’m around, when you appear I’m absent
Which of us deserves the blame in this mishap I repent?
When you’re around I’m absent, when I’m here you don’t come
Que Ninguem Me Veja Ver-vos / So No One Sees Me Seeing You
Lyrics: Luís Vaz de Camões, adaptation by Amélia Muge/Music: Fado Perseguição by Carlos Maia
(From the Portuguese lyrics)
To see you, and not to see
Are both mortal extremes
And in me they take such form
That in either case I die
But first I wish to satisfy
My heart — so as not to lose you
It could live without seeing you.
Amid such danger, what remedy can I have
When it’s by seeing you l live?
If I don’t see you it’s danger
So I choose to be a stranger
To myself, so no one sees me seeing you
Lady, so as not to lose you
Canção / Song
Lyrics: Luís Vaz de Camões, adaptation by Lina/Music: Traditional
(From the Portuguese lyrics)
Your laughter is composed/Of so many new-born graces,
Though there are those who accuse it/Of dimpling your face
Never was seen or recorded/Such a graceful mouth
Redder than coral outside/And whiter than snow the teeth
Endowed as you are by Nature/With the sum of perfection
What in you is a blemish/Is in others the fashion
Green’s nothing to be ashamed of
So, given that they’re yours/How lovely are your green eyes
Gold and blue are, by convention/Colors men give their lives for
But the charm of this green/Deprives color of all charm