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.
Zanguei-Me Com o Meu Amor
Amália Rodrigues Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Não o via em todo dia
Ai, zanguei-me com meu amor
Não o via em todo dia
À noite cantei melhor
O fado da mouraria
À noite cantei melhor
O sopro duma saudade
Vinha beijar-me hora a hora
Ai, o sopro duma saudade
Vinha beijar-me hora a hora
Pra ficar mais à vontade
Mandei a saudade embora
Pra ficar mais à vontade
Mandei a saudade embora
De manhã, arrependida
Lembrei-o, pus-me a chorar
Ai, de manhã, arrependida
Lembrei-o, pus-me a chorar
Quem perde um amor na vida
Jamais devia cantar
Quem perde um amor na vida
Ai, jamais devia cantar
Quando regressou ao ninho
Ele que mal assobia
Quando regressou ao ninho
Ele que mal assobia
Vinha assobiar baixinho
O fado da mouraria
Vinha assobiar baixinho
O fado da mouraria
The lyrics of Amália Rodrigues's song "Zanguei-Me Com o Meu Amor" express the pain of a love quarrel that resulted from the lack of regularity of the singer's relationship with her lover. She had not seen him in a long time and had grown angry, but her emotions were temporarily put aside as she sang the fado of the mouraria at night. However, the longing for her lover crept back in, and she sent it away to feel more at ease. In the morning, the singer regretfully remembered her lover and cried, realizing that one who has lost love should not sing.
The themes present in this song are typical of the fado genre predominant in the Portuguese culture, representing a melancholic melancholic sentiment. The mouraria specifically refers to the quarter of Lisbon where the majority of the fado houses and artists originated. The lyrics evoke the pain of lost love which is often addressed in fado songs, as it captures the essence of saudade, a Portuguese term that refers to a deep emotional state of melancholic longing.
Line by Line Meaning
Zanguei-me com meu amor
I got into an argument with my love
Não o via em todo dia
I hadn't seen him in a while
Ai, zanguei-me com meu amor
Oh, I didn't mean to argue with my love
À noite cantei melhor
I sang better at night
O fado da mouraria
The traditional music from my neighborhood
O sopro duma saudade
The wind that carries longing
Vinha beijar-me hora a hora
Kept reminding me of what I was missing
Pra ficar mais à vontade
To feel more comfortable
Mandei a saudade embora
I tried to forget my longing
De manhã, arrependida
Next morning, full of regret
Lembrei-o, pus-me a chorar
Remembered him, and started crying
Quem perde um amor na vida
Those who lose love in life
Jamais devia cantar
Should never sing again
Quando regressou ao ninho
When he returned home
Ele que mal assobia
He who barely whistles
Vinha assobiar baixinho
Came back to softly whistle
O fado da mouraria
The traditional music from my neighborhood
Writer(s): Jaime Tiago Dos Santos
Contributed by Carter E. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
Gilberto Abreu
Fantástica interpretação. Simplesmente a sublime Amália
Ana Esmeralda Fadista
Lindo este Fado Mouraria! Maravilhosa a voz da nossa Raínha Amália!!! ❤️👏👏🎶
Mario Deck
Linda voz cheia de poesia.
Maria Margarida Poli
Uma voz mágica !!!
Jorge Almeida
A voz de Amália veio para ficar entre os portugueses,espalhados por todo o Mundo
Joaquim Fialho
Mais uma maravilha cantada pela nossa querida Amália
AntorchaToxica
Simplesmente maravilhosa!
joão batista soares batista
Amália sempre eterna, um fado cantado por ela e de aripiar
José Simões
Única....insubstituível!!!
Philippe M
Cette chanson me donne des frissons , sublime tout simplement!