Fado: Casa de Fados

(from Carlos Saura’s film Fados)

 

Lyrics (from the film’s subtitles):

First singer:

A lost friendship can never return

It’s a forged firendship

 That jokingly comes and goes

It’s a forged friendship

that jokingly comes and goes

No one gives a thing

If behind that gesture there is no value

Only a friend can give love without receiveing

 

Second:

My mother I sing tonight

For the day has punished me

And in the silence of things

I find a friendly voice

And in the silence of things

I find a friendly voice

My mother I cry tonight

for the love I am drowning in

For the words of life

Have no other world

For I am this song

Mother, So hurt

I wear this body at night

without fate but with fado

I wear this body at night

without fate but with fado

 

Third:

Maybe fado will tell me what no one wants to say

That is why I chase it so that I may understand myself

That is why I chase it so that I may understand myself

My love I have sung

Under the last sky

Because I surrender myself in every last fado as if it were the first

Maybe fado does not ask me for everything I give it

So even when I forget

It does not forget me

So even when I forget

It does not forget me

 

Riberio:

Do not be afraid of fame, ill-famed Alfama

Do not be afraid of fame, ill-famed Alfama

Fame sometimes defames good honorable people

 

Other guy:

Fadistas come with me

Listen to the street fado

And sing a street duel

In a charming ancient quarter

 

Riberio:

Let’s go as I have said

You will see when the day dawns

How fun the revelry was

In the old Alfama quarter

Do not be afraid of fame ill-famed Alfama

 

Other guy:

I know of the world you speak

But surely I know wrong

I know what the world is saying

But surely out of spite

For was it always not true

That tales were told?

 Many people there lived

Very quiet lives

Which in a spiteful way are muddied

Fame

Sometimes defames

Good honorable people

Flamenco: Camarón-Rosa Maria

(rough translation of the lyrics)

translation:

O Morning breeze, go tell the gazelles of Najd

   that, “I’m true to the vow you know of”

And if what she says is true and she

   has for me the desperate longing I have

for her, then in the heat of noon we’ll meet

   in her tent secretly, with the most sincere promise