Fado

Click on this link and listen to Amalia Rodrigues while looking at pictures of Lisbon.

Yesterday when I was hot and tired and trudging back to my hotel, thinking rather uncharitable thoughts about my surroundings, I heard a woman's voice wafting down an alley: fado, the mournful music of Portugal.

And suddenly everything clicked and I found that I like Lisbon a lot. This city needs a soundtrack of loss and lamentation; it was once the capital of an empire, but is now a little provincial, a little worn. And fado is all about saudade, the longing for what is lost, and the recognition that it will never return.