The candidacy of the fado singer’s records is promoted through the National Sound Archive, in collaboration with Valentim de Carvalho.
In the year that celebrates the centenary of the birth of Amália Rodrigues, the Ministry of Culture will apply for the singer’s recordings to the UNESCO program “Memória do Mundo”.
The candidacy announced today will be promoted by the Ministry of Culture, through the National Sound Archive team in collaboration with the company Edições Valentim de Carvalho, owners of the collection of magnetic tapes recorded by the interpreter between 1951 and 1990 and other recordings, some that were never published (rehearsals, different takes, recording experiences, informal recordings, among others).
This application follows on from the work that the company Edições Valentim de Carvalho has long developed in the preservation and dissemination of such an important documentary fund and the beginning of joint work with the National Sound Archive team. With this application, we are not only affirming the importance of this documental fund as, in practice, to reinforce the visibility of these documents.
Amália Rodrigues, an interpreter associated with a Portuguese repertoire such as Fado, was responsible for the knowledge and projection of this genre across borders, without having stopped worrying about its renewal.
Amália Rodrigues crossed all borders:
- the territorial borders (he performed “live” and had his records published practically all over the world, from Australia to Azerbaijan; he performed both on stages in small villages in Italy and at the Lincoln Center in New York),
- the linguistic borders (interpreting repertoire in several languages such as Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, or English) and, above all,
- the frontiers of the musical genre, asserting itself as an interpreter of fado but also of Mexican ranchers, flamenco or Italian song, among other repertoires, inspiring authors such as Aznavour or Vinicius de Moraes who composed for her.
Thanks to an “outstanding” musical capacity, she revolutionized the genre in its multiple dimensions (musical, poetic, interpretive style).
In this application, four aspects are articulated:
- From a heritage point of view, the recognition of the universal importance of these documents and their preservation and dissemination
- Unequivocally reaffirm the national commitment to design, implement and strengthen a consolidated policy for sound heritage. We are working to install the technological infrastructure of the National Sound Archive, definitively ending an 85-year history. And we are doing it and we will always do it with all agents holding sound heritage.
The “Memory of the World” program is a UNESCO initiative that aims to highlight and preserve documents or sets of documents with special meaning and value for humanity, documents (also phonographic) with “worldwide importance and exceptional universal value”.
The first inscriptions took place in 1997, and to date, more than 400 documents or sets of documents, from the Magna Carta to the Gutenberg Bible, have been inscribed as “World Memory”.
To date, Portugal has registered 10 documents, including the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Diary of Vasco da Gama’s first trip to India, the Letter by Pêro Vaz de Caminha, or the registration of visas granted by the Portuguese consul Aristides Sousa Mendes.
In the domain of sound documentary heritage, there are several documents inscribed: the disc with the recording of the appeal to the French resistance in World War II by General de Gaulle; the historical collections from the Vienna, Berlin and St Petersburg sound archives; the 103 magnetic tapes with the recording of the Frankfurt – Auschwitz trial; or a collection of commercial records by Carlos Gardel. This application will be the first Portuguese application for an audiovisual document.
At a good time, the Ministry of Culture, through the National Sound Archive, decided to nominate the voice of Amália for “Memória do Mundo”.
Amália was one of the great voices of the 20th century. You can tell by your fingers who can compare you. Amália, unlike her peers, such as Sinatra, Callas or Gardel, was the only one who started from a musical genre and shone in all the others she tried.
Born in Fado, she turned it inside out and redefined its borders, left for other adventures, was applauded as a great Flamenco singer, in Mexico they consider her as one of the greatest singers of Rancheras, although she slightly appropriated the American songbook, it drew crowds in France and Italy with a Pop repertoire singing in languages that were not its own.
Amália is a unique case among the greats, no matter how important and ingenious the works of Agustina, Vieira da Silva, and Manoel de Oliveira are, no one has gone as far as Amália’s voice.
The decision to propose the voice of Amália as “Memória do Mundo” is very wise. It is true that Eusébio and Cristiano Ronaldo are only apart for 3 generations and that the statistics are there to be contradicted, but in a world of 7 billion, it is not natural that, among us, a voice like Amália will emerge in the next 1000 years.
Francisco Vasconcelos
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and TikTok and see the exclusive content for social networks.
