The Fado Museum is a

music museum Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all human societies. Definitions of musi ...

dedicated to

Fado Fado (; "destiny, fate") is a music genre which can be traced to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. Fado historian and scholar Rui Vieira Nery states that "the only reliable information on the history of fado ...

located in the Lisbon neighbourhood of

Alfama The Alfama () is the oldest neighborhood of Lisbon, spreading on the slope between the São Jorge Castle and the Tagus river. The district includes the ''freguesias'' (parishes) of São Miguel, Santo Estêvão, São Vicente de Fora and part of th ...

. It was inaugurated on 25 September 1998.

The building

The museum is housed in a building that was formerly a pumping station for Lisbon's water supply. Construction began in 1868 and in 1869 two steam engines made by an Anglo-French company, E. Windsor & Fils, were installed to power the pumping mechanism. It continued to carry out this function until 1938. The building then functioned as a workshop until after the 1974

Carnation Revolution The Carnation Revolution (), code-named Operation Historic Turn (), also known as the 25 April (), was a military coup by military officers that overthrew the Estado Novo government on 25 April 1974 in Portugal. The coup produced major socia ...

, when it was occupied by the

Portuguese Communist Party The Portuguese Communist Party (, , PCP) is a Communism, communist and Marxism–Leninism, Marxist–Leninist List of political parties in Portugal, political party in Portugal. It is one of the strongest List of communist parties, communist par ...

. Before opening as the Fado museum in 1998 it was restored and enlarged.

The museum

In 2008 the museum was thoroughly renovated. Rather than recreating the traditional environment of Fado, its Permanent Exhibition changed its focus to exhibiting artworks related to Fado by artists such as

José Malhoa José Vital Branco Malhoa, known simply as José Malhoa (28 April 1855 – 26 October 1933) was a Portuguese painter. Biography Malhoa was, with Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro, the leading name in Portuguese naturalist painting in the second half ...

Júlio Pomar Júlio Artur da Silva Pomar, GOL, GCM (10 January 1926 – 22 May 2018) was a Portuguese painter and visual artist. He was considered by leading art historian José-Augusto França as the greatest Portuguese painter of his generation. Early ...

and Constatino Fernandes, as well as objects from Fado's history, including

sheet music Sheet music is a handwritten or printed form of musical notation that uses musical symbols to indicate the pitches, rhythms, or chords of a song or instrumental musical piece. Like its analogs – printed Book, books or Pamphlet, pamphlets ...

, videos, music and hundreds of biographies. Among the works exhibited are the paintings ''O fado'' by José Malhoa and ''Os fadistas'' (1873) by Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro. An

audio guide An audio tour or audio guide provides a Sound recording, recorded spoken commentary, normally through a handheld device, to a visitor attraction such as a museum. They are also available for self-guided tours of outdoor locations, or as a part of ...

in Portuguese, English, French and Spanish was also made available to the museum's visitors. Since 2016 the museum hosts on its official website a digital sound archive with thousands of sound recordings, available in full, going back to the beginning of the 20th century. The recordings can be browsed by interpreter or repertoire. It has also launched a record label, Museu do Fado Discos.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official website

Digital Sound Archive
Fado Music museums in Portugal Culture in Lisbon Museums in Lisbon