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Last Updated: Jun 28, 2008 - 12:29:23 AM |
Singing the blues
Later, I settle down to a fine dinner on the upstairs
terrace of O Tapassol, one in a row of popular restaurants next to
Largo do Corpo Santo, Funchal's oldest quarter. At the next table sits
a young Dutch couple, and they tell about their last visit to Madeira,
when they took a too-ambitious levada path and ended up marching for 10
hours. Later we head down the street to an agreeably dark and
mysterious bar, the Marcelino Pao e Vinho, where a series of singers
step up to join a guitarist and lose themselves in "fado," Portuguese
folk music's answer to American acoustic blues. The singers are good,
full of "saudade," the sense of nostalgic melancholy that is supposed
to suffuse the Portuguese character. But I keep thinking: Here we sit
on this wonderfully odd island, 440 miles off the coast of North
Africa. What's to be melancholy about?
© Copyright 2008 by The Madeira Island Web Site
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