Carlos do Carmo sings the goodbye fado

Since the world was left without Amália Rodrigues, in October 1999, no name has garnered so much respect, veneration and a feeling of solemnity in the world of fado as that of Carlos do Carmo.

The heart of the great father of the most melancholic song on the planet stopped beating on the banks of the Tagus when this New Year was barely completing its first hours of life.

Do Carmo, who was admitted to Lisbon's Santa Maria hospital, had been suffering from heart problems for more than a decade.

He had turned 81 on December 21 and just over a year earlier, in November 2019, he said goodbye with two concerts in Porto and Lisbon to stages that had been his home since the early sixties.

Portugal will dawn on Monday 4th with a day of national mourning for the decision of the Prime Minister, António Costa, who announced the death of his illustrious compatriot "with extreme consternation and deep regret", an almost fadistic terminology in itself.

On Tuesday, coinciding with the effective start of the current Portuguese presidency in the European Union, the author of the song

will be honored with a show in the capital.

The

ran through the veins from the cradle, as maternal inheritance: his mother was one of the pioneers of the genre Lucilia do Carmo.

Young Carlos lingered in other professional directions and thus came to study hospitality in Geneva and languages ​​at a German institute.

But the early death in 1962 of his father, the bookseller Alfredo Almeida, precipitated that he had to assume the regency of the family business, the house of fados O Faia, in the classic and immortal Bairro Alto.

And from the management to the tables there were so few meters away that in 1963 he had already released his first album,

.

His first artistic decades are closely related to that establishment, although since then he has striven to dissociate the fado from its halo as the unofficial music of the dictatorial regime of Salazar.

“It is true that with the dictatorship it softened and sang of love and lack of love, but since the 19th century, fado was a protest song, of the trade unionists, of the people.

A strong, intense song ”, he warned in November 2019 in an interview with EL PAÍS.

He, in fact, never concealed his leftist preferences, although always oblivious to any militancy, as a way to preserve his independence.

“Now Portugal enjoys a rare privilege, a president and prime minister who are not corrupt.

In 1974 we had 36% illiteracy;

and today we have free education.

There are problems, but progress is great ”, he emphasized in the aforementioned meeting with this newspaper.

Consequently, Do Carmo was - like the bulk of Lusitanian culture - one of those that received the Carnation Revolution with joy in 1974, to which it would pay tribute three years later with a thematic album,

, around to the poetry of the Lisbon communist poet Ary dos Santos.

His figure by then was already beginning to be familiar far from Iberian lands, among other reasons thanks to his participation as a Portuguese representative in Eurovision 1976 with the theme

, who obtained a discreet twelfth place.

It was the least of it.

Over the years, his strong, deep and emotional song would resonate in some of the most imposing coliseums in the world, from the Royal Albert Hall in London to the Olympia in Paris or the Alter Oper in Frankfurt.

And so on, until arriving, already in 2018, at Carnegie Hall in New York.

Many of the representatives of the new generations of fado saw in Do Carmo the historical reference and the paradigm of orthodoxy, but their vision of the genre was much more eclectic than all that.

Among those close to him, he mentioned the importance of this aching song undergoing its own "process of evolution", and even hoped that those renewing winds would come from beyond the Portuguese borders.

That is why he was delighted to participate with Caetano Veloso, Mariza or Camané in

(2007), the film by Carlos Saura, which earned him a Goya for the best original song for

.

Other trophies on his shelf were the 2014 Latin Grammy of Honor, for his then half-century career, or the Medal of Cultural Merit from the Portuguese Ministry of Culture.

The Portuguese government will also grant him the Order of Freedom shortly.

“Carlos was very impressive.

Only his voice already inspired a lot of authority and presence, but then he was a cultured, provocative and funny man, with a great sense of humor;

one of the most open minds I have ever known ”, remembered the San Sebastian fado singer María Berasarte, whom Do Carmo sponsored in 2009, writing a presentation text for her album

.

Berasarte was amazed at the closeness and austerity of such a venerable artist.

“One by one he greeted his musicians, handed them the concert repertoire handwritten by himself, remembered the names of all the technicians.

In recent years, already so delicate, he lived away from everything and even restricted telephone calls.

He was a man of great vitality who had to protect himself against strong emotions ”.

In his interview with EL PAÍS, the fadista assumed the closeness of the end.

“It is finitude and I recognize it because I have seen it up close on three occasions.

Let's say I'm ready ”.

During the last three years he had completed a new LP,

(And yet…), with poems by Saramago, Herberto Hélder or Sophia de Mello Breyner.

It will see the light shortly, already posthumously, and will be number 22 of his career, in addition to half a dozen live albums and as many compilations.

In any of them you can see the versatility of his singing, which he liked to compare with that of Jacques Brel and, above all, Frank Sinatra.

“When the connection of soul, heart and voice is achieved, there is fado.

And that's what Sinatra achieved, who for me was a great fado player… ”, he liked to score with a smile.