AMALIA RODRIGUES (July 23, 1920 – October 6, 1999) Just a few steps away from the center of Lisbon, the Avenida da Liberdade, right at the feet of Castelo de Sao Jorge is the neighborhood of Mouraria in which a humble plaque marks the miserable house where Amália Rodrigues spent her childhood. Lisbon is my favorite city in Europe, it is where I feel most at home. I have never talked on my Facebook wall on my passionate love for everything Portuguese, esp. when it comes to Lisbon. Maybe because Lisbon is something too intimate to talk about, or maybe because I am afraid I will not find many Europeans who share my passion for Portugals present and past. Lisbon is humble and unpretentious like an aristocrat whos seen better days. Its architecture is marked by majestic buildings and small, very small houses for the Lisboetas, the people who created and loved the fado. Amália was the uncontested queen of fado. One of the things I love most in life is walking aimlessly uphill and downhill and then uphill again in Lisbons narrow lanes, and going up to Amálias childhood home in Mouraria has been always a must for me each and every of the countless times I have been in Portugal. I like to go outside Amálias home and take a few moments to take in Mouraria in silence. Trying to picture life there in the 20s, trying to hear the Divas voice from among the voices of the kids playing barefoot in the street, a black and white world as if from an old photo of eras long gone by. Amália is my Lisbon. Her music has been accompanying my endless perambulations through a dreamlike Lisbon that lives deep in my subconscious. Her music has been accompanying me while I was reading my favorite author in this world (whom I also never mentioned here on Fb earlier), António Lobo Antunes, whose writing oozes humanism and beauty and Portugal, its traumatic history and the pain of being Portuguese. On the anniversary of Amálias death my mind goes back to her beloved Lisbon. I look one after the other at the photos I took from that city where she lived, she loved and was loved, the city in which her voice never ceased to reverberate ever since she gave her first amateur performance there. On this day my mind stops again outside that humble home in Mouraria. I hum her songs that I have listened to countless times. This is my way of thanking Amália for all the beauty she blessed my life with.
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 22:38:48 +0000