Flamenco/Fado

Flamenco is a complex and energetic form of acoustic dance music led by guitar, castanets, hand-clapping, and voice. It was developed in the caves of southern Spain by poorer classes, including Gypsies, although its foundations can be found in the musical traditions of invading Arabs and Moors and their descendants. The style's Middle Eastern roots are evident in its instrumentation and its use of the Phrygian scale (a descending minor mode). Younger Flamenco performers have developed a new offshoot, Nuevo Cancion, which integrates electric and international instrumentation along with non-Flamenco rhythms. Like Flamenco, Portuguese Fado is a folk music with murky origins that has captivated and defined the diminutive country's soul for decades, if not centuries. Epitomized by the work of Fado dynamo Amalia Rodrigues, the music is characterized by passionate, breathtakingly emotional vocals that verge on the maudlin, usually accompanied by a twelve-string guitar or the Spanish viola (also a guitar). The word "fado" means fate, and the lyrics accordingly reflect fate's bum dealings as gracefully -- if tragically -- accepted by the singer. Achingly beautiful at its best and occasionally self-indulgent, it's no coincidence that Fado's rise coincided with Portugal's demise as a world power.