The music, traditionally performed in an intimate setting known as a "fado house," is guitar-based, and built around classical guitar and the notoriously difficult 12-string Portuguese guitar.

As the first woman to professionally take up the Portuguese guitar, Lisbon’s Marta Pereira da Costa can fairly be described as a musical pioneer who has opened up new territory for female musicians.

Fado is the music of Portugal, a haunting, emotional style intimately bound up with that tiny country's history and seagoing soul. Yet on her latest recording, Mariza, fado's greatest contemporary ...

With her mahogany-rich voice, impassioned performances and striking looks, the Portuguese fado singer Mariza has, in a few short years, become a reigning diva on the world music scene. She has blown ...

In recent years, the melancholic Portuguese folk music known as fado has gotten a lot of play around the world. Many of the singers have stylized their songs to suit the tastes of an international ...

This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). It’s nearing midnight in Alfama, Lisbon’s oldest neighbourhood, when a lady in black steps into a taverna. The bar staff scurry to turn ...

Seen from an American perspective, the renewal of Portuguese fado — a trend that has surged in the last 10 to 15 years — has brought a glamorous addition to world-music programming. Seductive stars ...

Vieira has released several albums, among them “Sem Ti” (Without You), “Despi A Alma” (roughly translated as Bare Soul), ...

It's after dark in Lisbon's ramshackle Alfama neighborhood. Old-timers gather in restaurants, which serve little more than grilled sardines, to hear and sing Portugal's mournful fado ... a traditional ...

If you go to Lisbon, you go listen to Portuguese fado, the city’s music about "fate." Follow the signs in the old neighborhoods, and you can’t miss the restaurants advertising live music with dinner.