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Amateur Fado in the Context of the City of Lisbon

Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2012

Abstract

"Amateur Fado in the Context of the City of Lisbon" The paper focuses on the Lisbon cultural phenomenon of the traditional urban music, fado, with an emphasis on its amateur practice. It explains briefly the impact of Salazar's fascist regime which entailed a radical change of status of a fadista artist who was abruptly separated from the original popular practice of fado and closed into a codified environment for professionals - casa de fado.

But the popular fado remained preserved in different places in the city and sill has an important role in a local context of the Lisbon popular quarters. It interlaces social relations and its continuous presence influences strongly configuration of local cultural patterns.

Whereas typical casas de fado are focused on broad public, attractiveness of the places with amateur fado sessions lies in social intercourse. They can be found all around the city and they are not dependent on running fado sessions.

One of those places is a neighbourhood recreation association. According to Portuguese sociologist António Firmino Costa they entail one of the essential roles in continuous recreation of fado as urban popular cultural practice.

The research concentrates on amateur fado in a neighbourhood recreation association Mirantense Futebol Club in the quarter of Santa Engrácia.