Sara Correia Interview: “Whatever I sing it will always be fado”

Sara Correia is one of the rising stars of the fado scene in Portugal. She asks me to meet her at a fado school where she learned when she was young and started performing. It’s nowhere near the famous fado districts of Alfama, Mouraria or Bairro Alto. The Clube Lisboa Amigos do Fado is in Chelas, a Lisbon neighbourhood of high-rise blocks that grew up near the airport after the revolution that overthrew the right-wing dictatorship in 1974. “It’s a racially mixed neighbourhood,” she says, “and fado is very big here, as well as hip-hop.”

Correia was born just a couple of streets away and still lives nearby. Fado was part of her life from the beginning, her aunt was a fado singer. Correia came and knocked on the door of the fado school when she was eight years old. It looks like so many fado houses with checked tablecloths, guitars and photos on the wall – several of Correia herself, as well as local fado heroes of earlier generations. It’s a fado school by day and a fado club by night. “It looked very different then,” she smiles, “just bare concrete walls, with no colours, no photos.”

“When I was a little girl I always liked to sing. The school was close by and it was for free.” Her mother worked as a secretary in a school and her parents separated when she was ten years old. “I think that somehow made me stronger and I sang very much to help my mother and my brother when I was a girl. Amália [Rodrigues] said it’s not possible to explain fado in words. But I know I need to sing fado – every day. It’s something urgent for me.”

The training must have been excellent because Correia won the biggest fado competition, the Grande Noite do Fado, shortly before her 14th birthday. “This was a very important day for me because it made me realise that I really wanted to be a fado singer.” Soon she was regularly singing in all the best fado houses in Lisbon.

She released an album as a result of winning the competition, but it was her eponymous Warner debut, recorded when she was 23 years old, that won her Portuguese and international attention. She clearly comes across as a strong-willed, independent woman from a working-class background. “This album is very important to me because it’s the story of my life,” she explains. “My life story is in the neighbourhood and my childhood was very difficult. My parents breaking up and being alone with my mother and my six-year-old brother.”

One of the most striking songs on the album is ‘Agora o Tempo’ (Time Now), composed by guitarist and producer Diogo Clemente, who’s also worked with Mariza and Carminho (among many others). ‘Now I don’t know what I should write anymore / I lost so many words along the way / Outside, another day will soon be rising / And I just want the night to fall on me alone.’ Correia’s voice is kind of husky and low, and alongside the traditional acoustic and Portuguese guitars, there’s a side drum – unusual in fado – that adds a harshness to the song. ‘Now the old cigarette smoke / Is not enough to drown out my loneliness. / Life is a sad cup I that hold on to / And that wants to live in the palm of my hand.’

“My first boyfriend helped me to get through the separation of my parents and make me positive,” she admits. And certainly the songs are not self-pitying, but resilient even though there’s plenty of saudade, the grief and longing so redolent of fado. ‘People will speak of saudades for no reason at all / Saudades, only those who feel it can really know what they are.’

Her subsequent album, Do Coração (From the Heart), came out in 2020, and she sees it as passing on her musical influences as she works with contemporary Portuguese songwriters. One of her important fado heroes was Fernando Maurício (1933-2003), a singer celebrated in the Amigos do Fado club as he was a local guy. Correia sang for him in Mouraria and he encouraged her just to keep singing so that “whatever I sing it will always be fado. I believe a fado singer can sing any song with different instruments and can still sound like fado.”

The performing area at Amigos do Fado is backed by a reproduction of the most famous fado painting. It’s called O Fado and was created in 1910 by the Portuguese realist painter José Malhoa. You find reproductions in many of Lisbon’s fado houses and the original is displayed in Lisbon’s Fado Museum in Alfama. A singer is provocatively sprawled on a wooden chair with a cigarette in her right hand and looking either at the guy playing Portuguese guitar, or possibly at the bottle of spirit next to him. It’s the grittier side of fado that Malhoa is depicting. “For me it’s the personification of fado,” says Correia. “The painting portrays fado’s origins, what it means and what it wants to convey to those who listen to fado. And because it’s present in many of the places where I learned and are dear to me, when I look at it, I get a real sensation of being a fado singer.” Sara Correia does seem firmly grounded in fado’s roots among the people.

Once we’ve finished talking at the fado school in Chelas we go to one of the most famous fado clubs in Bairro Alto, Faia – it’s one of the many venues in which Correia has regularly performed. If Malhoa’s painting shows the grimy side of fado, Faia is fado bling. It was opened in 1947 by Lucília do Carmo (1919-1998) – there’s a tiled portrait of her on the wall inside. She was a famous fado singer and mother to Carlos do Carmo (1939-2021), the most celebrated male fadista of recent times and father of Gil do Carmo, who is currently doing new things with that fado history. So, Faia, which means ‘Bohemian,’ is a place with a lineage – and a superb restaurant with wonderful local specialties. It’s pricey and most of the clientele are international. The Malhoa painting is here, too – in pride of place in the performing space – alongside photos of the many legends who have performed here. “They are like our churches, these places,” adds Correia.

We meet guitarist and producer Diogo Clemente, who clutches a large gin and tonic outside Faia. He started playing guitar in fado clubs when he was 13 and started playing here when he was 15. The fado evening begins with a young, 20-something singer called Beatrice Felicio who, before she starts, approaches Correia and asks if it’s okay to sing ‘Eu Já Não Sei’ (I Don’t Know), a fado Correia’s been singing for a long time and has become associated with her. Asking permission is a gesture of respect. Correia tells me it’s about a couple breaking up – maybe a reflection of her parents’ story once again. ‘I don’t know whether I love you or hate you, but I need you…’ The second fadista is a man who sings ‘Loucura’, an Amália Rodrigues song that has entered the standard repertoire. ‘I’m crazy,’ it says, ‘but without that I can’t be a fadista.’ And finally, Lenita Gentil, the 70-something veteran of Faia gets up to sing. She sang fado in the US with Amália. Sara Correia gets up to sing alongside her. “People get very emotional when listening to fado,” says Clemente. “But fado isn’t something you sing for an audience. It’s something you sing because you need to. And everyone can feel the roots in Sara’s voice,” he adds.

We finish the evening, as so often happens, at the nearby Tasca do Chico – a place where anyone can get up to sing fado. Sara Correia of course obliges, with Clemente on guitar. All the fado singers of Lisbon drop in here – there are hundreds of photos of them on the wall. In fact, one could argue Tasca do Chico might not even have walls, just pictures holding the whole thing up – and football scarves across the ceiling. Malhoa’s O Fado painting is here too, of course. In Chelas it was framed in wood, in Faia it was in gilt and here it’s in a clip-frame. The same painting, but three very different settings.

Correia gave her first London concert earlier this year (reviewed in July 2022, #179) and it was a dramatic and theatrical show. She’s played concerts across Europe and beyond. I’ve seen her in three very different settings – an international concert on stage, in a top level fado house with predominantly foreign guests and here, in a typical local place among Portuguese. Performing in each must be very different experiences, I suggest. “Of course they’re different,” she admits, “but it’s mainly to do with the intimacy. As far as the performance goes, it’s the same. I just put everything I have into it, whoever I’m singing for.”

This interview originally appeared in the November 2022 issue of Songlines magazine.

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See Sara Correia live at Cadogan Hall in London on February 17, 2024. Visit comono.co.uk for tickets