Fado

Fado is the urban song tradition of Lisbon, a solo vocal lament of longing, fate and loss accompanied by the twelve-string Portuguese guitar, Spanish guitar and, later, acoustic bass. Its name derives from the Latin fatum, and its defining emotion is saudade, an untranslatable yearning for absent people, places and times. Singers deliver improvised, ornamented lines over cyclic harmonic patterns in an intimate tavern setting where audiences demand silence, while a related, more formal variant is sung by male students and alumni of the University of Coimbra. It is Portugal's most internationally recognised traditional music.