Fado, a nation's soul through music

There is a portuguese word that can't be accuretly translated, "saudade" wich means longing, but with a kind of pseudo-physical and mental pain associated with it. "Saudade" is the pain from somone or something being away from you, detached, unrechable, and with the possiblity of forever lost. And that feeling, that untranslatable word, also has a musical form, Fado.

You may already have heard of Fado (in 2011 it was included in UNESCO list of World’s Intangible Cultural Heritage), the tradicional portuguese music. In it's most basic form is played with two guitars, a classic guitar and a portuguese guitar, and a singer. The general sound of this kind of music is a sound of mourning, of sorrow, of "saudade". But this longing ("saudade") is not only of things past, but also of things present and future. This leads us to the etymology of the word Fado. I can give no better explanation to this than the one that's on wikipedia:

"The word "fado" comes from the Latin word fatum,from which the English word "fate" also originates. The word is linked to the music genre itself and, although both meanings are approximately the same in the two languages, Portuguese speakers seldom utilize the word fado referring to destiny or fate."

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fado

So fado also means destiny, fate. And portuguese people have a strange relationship with fate, although we're a people of makers of their own fate (starting with our founder king D. Afonso Henriques, wich started a realm of his own even if the pope said we couldn't ), we're very tied to the condition of waiting for a savior (The coming of D. Sebastião and the fith empire, check it on wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_Empire ), and fado brings it all together, through music!

So this is also the portuguese entity, the makers of their own fate longing for the savior that never comes. And that longing brings the hope needed to have the strengh to write our own fate. And fado is the commun language of that feeling.

"Fado", from José Malhoa
(the man is playing a portuguese guitar, in a tavern, to a woman, can't get more tradicional than that)
For those who know nothing of this music you can start by listening to some tradicional ones like:

But fado isn't just a style of music, is a language for a state of being, and so it has many forms, like this two more modern:

Or even this one, the "electric fado":