Fado and the Place of Longing: Loss, Memory and the City (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series) - Hardcover

Richard Elliott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0754667952 ISBN 13: 9780754667957

Publisher: Routledge, 2010

Synopsis

Fado, often described as 'urban folk music', emerged from the streets of Lisbon in the mid-nineteenth century and went on to become Portugal's 'national' music during the twentieth. It is known for its strong emphasis on loss, memory and nostalgia within its song texts, which often refer to absent people and places. One of the main lyrical themes of fado is the city itself. Fado music has played a significant role in the interlacing of mythology, history, memory and regionalism in Portugal in the second half of the twentieth century. Richard Elliott considers the ways in which fado songs bear witness to the city of Lisbon, in relation to the construction and maintenance of the local. Elliott explores the ways in which fado acts as a cultural product reaffirming local identity via recourse to social memory and an imagined community, while also providing a distinctive cultural export for the dissemination of a 'remembered Portugal' on the global stage.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Elliott is Lecturer in Popular Music at the University of Sussex and researches on loss, memory, nostalgia and revolution in popular music. He is the author of the books Fado and the Place of Longing: Loss, Memory and the City (Ashgate, 2010) and Nina Simone (Equinox, 2013).

Review

This book comes as a welcome and most needed addition to the small number of publications on fado in English...' Journal of Popular Music

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0754667952
• ISBN 13: 9780754667957
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256