Fado Camões

Ana Moura's "Fado Camões" approaches Portugal's greatest poet with the reverence owed to a national saint and the intimacy owed to someone who still has things to teach you. Luís de Camões — the sixteenth-century poet of Os Lusíadas — represents the full aspiration and tragedy of the Portuguese imagination, and bringing his verses into the fado tradition is both natural and consequential. Moura's voice is among the most physically distinctive in contemporary fado — a deep mezzo with unusual power and a vibrato that arrives not as ornament but as the natural consequence of sustained emotional investment. "Fado Camões" respects the classical verses while demonstrating that the fado form has always been the appropriate vessel for them, that the sixteenth-century language of longing and maritime adventure and impossible love is the same language fado has always spoken. The guitarra portuguesa work is elaborate and respectful, the player understanding that Camões deserves the full virtuosic resources of the tradition. Moura, who collaborated with the Rolling Stones and Caetano Veloso without losing her fado grounding, demonstrates here her deep rootedness — this is where she comes from, and coming from it this completely allows her to go everywhere else. For afternoons spent reading, for the contemplation of things that last.