Born in Lisbon, Portugal, official documents have her date of birth as the 23rd July, but Rodrigues always said her birthday was the 1st July 1920. She was born in the rua Martim Vaz (Martim Vaz Street), freguesia of Pena, Lisbon. Her father was a trumpet player and cobbler from Fundão who returned there when Amália was just over a year old, leaving her to live in Lisbon with her maternal grandmother in a deeply Catholic environment until she was fourteen, when her parents returned to the capital and she moved back in with them.
She was known as the "Rainha do Fado" ("Queen of Fado"), and was most influential in popularising fado worldwide. She was unquestionably the most important figure in the genre’s development, by virtue of an innate interpretive talent carefully nurtured throughout a forty-year recording and stage career. Rodrigues' performances and choice of repertoire pushed fado’s boundaries and helped redefine it and reconfigure it for her and subsequent generations. In effect, Rodrigues wrote the rulebook on what fado could be and on how a female singer - or fadista - should perform it, to the extent that she remains an unsurpassable model and an unending source of repertoire for all those who came afterwards.
After a few years of amateur performances, Rodrigues’ first professional engagement in a fado venue took place in 1939, and she quickly became a regular guest star in stage revues. There she met Frederico Valério, a classically-trained composer who, recognising the potential in such a voice, wrote expansive melodies custom-designed for Rodrigues’ voice, breaking the rules of fado by adding orchestral accompaniment.
Her Portuguese popularity began to extend abroad with trips to Spain, a lengthy stay in Brazil (where, in 1945, she made her first recordings on Brazilian label Continental) and Paris (in 1949). In 1950, while performing at the Marshall Plan international benefit shows, she introduced "April in Portugal" to international audiences (under its original title "Coimbra"). In the early fifties, the patronage of the acclaimed Portuguese poet David Mourão-Ferreira marked the beginning of a new phase; Rodrigues sang many of the country's greatest poets, and some wrote lyrics specifically for her.
In 1954, Rodrigues' international career skyrocketed through her presence in Henri Verneuil’s film The Lovers of Lisbon, where she had a supporting role and performed on-screen. By the late 1950s the USA, England, and France had become her major international markets (Japan and Italy followed in the 1970s); in France especially, her popularity rivalled her Portuguese success, and she graduated to headliner at the prestigious Olympia theatre within a matter of months. Over the years, she performed nearly all over the world, going as far as the Soviet Union and Israel.
At the end of the 1950s, Rodrigues took a year off. She returned in 1962 with a richer voice, concentrating on recording and performing live at a slower pace. Her comeback album, 1962's Amália Rodrigues, was her first collaboration with French composer Alain Oulman, her main songwriter and musical producer throughout the decade. As Valério had before him, Oulman wrote melodies for her that transcended the conventions of fado. Rodrigues did not shy away from controversy: her performance in Carlos Vilardebó’s 1964 arthouse film The Enchanted Islands was better received than the film, based on a short story by Herman Melville, and her 1965 recording of poems by 16th century poet Luís de Camões generated acres of newspaper polemics. Yet her popularity remained untouched. Her 1968 single "Vou Dar de Beber à Dor" broke all sales records, and her 1970 album Com que Voz, considered by many her definitive recording, won a number of international awards.
During the 1970s, Rodrigues concentrated on live work, and embarked upon a heavy schedule of worldwide concert performances. During the frenetic period after the 25th April 1974 she was falsely accused of being a covert agent of the PIDE, causing some trauma to her public life and career. (In fact, during the Salazar years, Rodrigues had been an occasional financial supporter of some communists in need.) Her return to the recording studio in 1977 with Cantigas numa Língua Antiga was received as a triumph. The 1980s and 1990s brought her enthronement as a living legend. Her last all-new studio recording, Lágrima, was released in 1983. It was followed by a series of previously lost or unreleased recordings, and the smash success of two greatest hits collections that sold over 200,000 copies combined.
Despite a series of illnesses involving her voice, Rodrigues continued recording as late as 1990. She eventually retreated from public performance, although her career gained in stature with an official biography by historian and journalist Vítor Pavão dos Santos, and a five-hour television series documenting her fifty-year career, featuring rare archival footage (later distilled into the ninety-minute film documentary, The Art of Amália). Its director, Bruno de Almeida, has also produced Amália, Live in New York City (a concert film of her 1990 performance at New York City Hall).
Rodrigues died on the 6th October 1999 at the age of seventy-nine in her home in Lisbon. Portugal's government promptly declared a period of national mourning. Her house (in Rua de São Bento) is now a museum. She is now buried at the National Pantheon alongside other Portuguese notables.
1946.
La Tramontana
Amália Rodrigues Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Per farci ridere un po'
Inventa pure dicci, dicci perché…
Quello che adesso dirò
Per farvi ridere un po'
Non é invenzione
Ma é la verità
Da quando il giorno
Non é più il giorno
Da quando il sole
Non é più sole
Da quando l'alba si e' fatta strana
Ho perduto la tramontana
Da quando il vento
Mi ha sussurrato
Che lei va in giro col carro armato
Da quando ho visto
Che fa l'indiana
Ho perduto la tramontana
L'ho perduta seguendo lei
E adesso cosa dirai
Per farci ridere un po'
Che cosa inventi
Dicci, dicci perché…
Quello che adesso dirò
Per farvi ridere un po'
Non é invenzione
Ma é la verità
Da quando Eva mangiò la mela
Ha combinato dei grossi guai
Ma se aspettava una settimana
Non perdeva la tramontana
Invece io son qui che soffro
Son qui che lotto
Tra il bene e il male
E per il filo di quella lana
Ho perduto la tramontana
L'ho perduta seguendo lei
E adesso cosa dirai
Per farci ridere un po'
Che cosa inventi
Dicci, dicci perché….
Quello che adesso dirò
Per farvi ridere un po'
Non e' invenzione ma e' la verità
Se proprio voi mi prendete in giro
Conosco tutte le vostre donne
E non é detto che per Giuliana
Io non perdo la tramontana
Mi piaccion nere mi piaccion bionde
Mi piaccion tutte le donne al mondo
E per il pizzo di una sottana
Perdo sempre la tramontana
L'ho perduta e la perderò
Mi piaccion nere mi piaccion bionde
Mi piaccion tutte le donne al mondo
E per il pizzo di una sottana
Perdo sempre la tramontana
L'ho perduta e la perderò.
The lyrics to Amália Rodrigues's song La Tramontana tell a story of a man who has lost his way, both literally and figuratively. He starts with a request for someone to invent a story to make him laugh, but then confesses that what he is about to say is not an invention but the truth. He talks about how everything has changed, from the day to the sun to the wind, and that since he saw someone he knows driving around in a tank, he has lost his sense of direction. He followed this person, who acts like an Indian, and in doing so, he lost his way entirely.
The man compares himself to Eve, who ate the forbidden apple and caused all sorts of trouble, but he admits that had she waited a week, she would not have lost her way like he has. He talks about struggling between the forces of good and evil and how he is only a hair's breadth away from losing his way again because he is attracted to women of all types. He describes how seeing the hem of a skirt or the curve of a leg is enough to make him lose his sense of direction. The song resonates with anyone who has ever felt lost or disoriented, whether in love or in life, and is a poignant reminder of the fragility of human nature.
Line by Line Meaning
Inventa quello che vuoi
Per farci ridere un po'
Inventa pure dicci, dicci perché…
Tell us a joke, anything to make us laugh, go ahead and ask why...
Quello che adesso dirò
Per farvi ridere un po'
Non é invenzione
Ma é la verità
What I'm about to say to make you laugh is not fiction, it's the truth.
Da quando il giorno
Non é più il giorno
Da quando il sole
Non é più sole
Da quando l'alba si e' fatta strana
Ho perduto la tramontana
Da quando il vento
Mi ha sussurrato
Che lei va in giro col carro armato
Da quando ho visto
Che fa l'indiana
Ho perduto la tramontana
L'ho perduta seguendo lei
Since the day when the world turned upside down, and the sun stopped shining, since the day when the wind whispered to me that she rides in tanks, and I saw her acting like a daredevil, I lost my sense of direction and followed her blindly.
E adesso cosa dirai
Per farci ridere un po'
Che cosa inventi
Dicci, dicci perché…
What will you say now to make us laugh? Tell us anything, why...
Se proprio voi mi prendete in giro
Conosco tutte le vostre donne
E non é detto che per Giuliana
Io non perdo la tramontana
Mi piaccion nere mi piaccion bionde
Mi piaccion tutte le donne al mondo
E per il pizzo di una sottana
Perdo sempre la tramontana
L'ho perduta e la perderò
If you really want to make fun of me, know that I know all your women, and it's not certain that just for Giuliana's sake, I won't lose my sense of direction again. I love women, all women, blondes, brunettes, and every other type, and I'm always susceptible to losing my mind over a skirt.
Quello che adesso dirò
Per farvi ridere un po'
Non e' invenzione ma e' la verità
What I'm about to say to make you laugh is not fiction, it's the truth.
Contributed by Kaylee O. Suggest a correction in the comments below.