Carminho rekindles the flames of fado
“Poor Things” is a movie full of striking moments, but one of the most memorable is a musical performance from the singularly named Portuguese singer Carminho. As part of the film’s Oscar-nominated score from Jerskin Fendrix, she sings the song “O Quarto” (The Room), a shimmering introduction for many moviegoers to the sounds of fado, the dramatically mournful style born in a time of Portuguese history went men set sail in hopes of conquest and riches while women stayed behind to put a candle in the window and grieve their loss.
As culturally significant to Portugal as flamenco is to Spain, tango is to Argentina, samba is to Brazil and blues is to the U.S., fado had been falling out of favor with younger Portuguese listeners in the latter part of the 20th century. It was considered old-fashioned. But a new generation of performers — including the likes of Ana Mourna and Mariza as well as producers Slow J and Stereossauro, who respectively combine fado with hip-hop/Afrobeats and electronic music — is pumping it with new life. And now comes “Poor Things,” partially set in a playfully Old World Lisbon, to take it to the modern English-speaking world.
“My mother is a singer, so I don’t know if I started to sing or speak Portuguese first,” says Carminho (full name Maria do Carmo Carvalho Rebelo de Andrade), 39, with a laugh in a recent Google Meet call. “When I got to the beginning of my adolescence, I realized that my generation didn’t like fado so much. … There was a little bit of bullying around the fact that I was singing fado. … (But) I realized that I loved fado so much and fado gave me a sense of belonging … and maybe fado saved me from being so lonely and so miserable.”
Loneliness played a part in her “Poor Things” scene, too. She says that, after the filmmakers came to her about being in the movie, she had several ideas but settled on “O Quarto” because it reflected the mental state of Emma Stone’s character, Bella Baxter. “It’s this surrealistic image of suffocating,” she says. “There’s so much loneliness that even the air can’t fit. … She changed with that scene. … She grows and discovers that life has suffering or pain associated with it. It’s not just discovering exciting experiences.”
Now, Carminho, who brings a contemporary flourish to fado, is lonely no more. Her first album, succinctly titled “Fado” in 2009, was a bestseller in Portugal. She became a star in Brazil, too, and collaborated with such Brazilian stars as Caetano Veloso and Milton Nascimento.
Last year, she sang for the pope during World Youth Day in Lisbon and was invited by Coldplay to sing the song “Coimbra” at the group’s performance in Coimbra, Portugal. Her most recent album, “Portuguesa,” was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Portuguese Language Roots Album category. A tour of the U.S. is planned for fall of this year.
But she says she doesn’t feel burdened under the mantle of being the new face of fado.
“I just think that it’s very important to respect the genre but, at the same time, to be myself,” she says. “So, to balance these two (things) is the challenge for me.”