With her mahogany-rich voice, impassioned performances and striking looks, the Portuguese fado singer Mariza has, in a few short years, become a reigning diva on the world music scene. She has blown ...

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). It’s nearing midnight in Alfama, Lisbon’s oldest neighbourhood, when a lady in black steps into a taverna. The bar staff scurry to turn ...

The music, traditionally performed in an intimate setting known as a "fado house," is guitar-based, and built around classical guitar and the notoriously difficult 12-string Portuguese guitar.

Listening to Portuguese fado singer Mariza, it's really hard not to be taken away by her passionate singing, charismatic stage presence, and sly sass. Yet, beneath her almost fragile and gentle ...

Seen from an American perspective, the renewal of Portuguese fado — a trend that has surged in the last 10 to 15 years — has brought a glamorous addition to world-music programming. Seductive stars ...

Ramana Vieira of Vacaville, an internationally known singer of fado, a kind of Portuguese folk song, usually melancholic and nostalgic, calls the music “a window into the soul” of Portuguese people.

As the first woman to professionally take up the Portuguese guitar, Lisbon’s Marta Pereira da Costa can fairly be described as a musical pioneer who has opened up new territory for female musicians.

In recent years, the melancholic Portuguese folk music known as fado has gotten a lot of play around the world. Many of the singers have stylized their songs to suit the tastes of an international ...

Singer Mariza has been the driving force in revitalizing the lamenting Portuguese musical genre fado, sometimes likened to the blues, a revival sparked by release of her first studio album in 2001.

Don’t speak to me only of love, But talk to me about fado. In Portugal, such an injuction in the middle of a love song is as standard as June & moon rhymes in the U.S. Fado (pronounced fah-doo), ...

The music of a country is one of the keys to its culture; Argentina has the tango, Spain has flamenco, and Portugal has fado. It's a musical form that draws on many different historical and cultural ...