Fado in Café Luso, Lisbon, Portugal 2005

The "Café Luso" was established in Lisbon in 1927 at nr.31 of Avenida da Liberdade and later in 1939 moved to the Palace Brito Freire in the Bairro Alto borough. This Palace built in the late 17th Century for an aristocratic family, survived the catastrophic earthquake of 1755 and has remained almost untouched up to today. The "Café Luso", Fado House and Restaurant, is located within a solid and austere area, the former cellars and stables of the Palace Brito Freire, also known as Palace of St. Roque. The decorative patrimony includes the ceramic panels by Master Ferreira da Silva (1960's) and more recently the paintings of acrylic on canvas by Mr. Norberto Nunes.

Fado is a music genre that can be traced to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. Fado historian and scholar Rui Vieira Nery states that "the only reliable information on the history of fado was orally transmitted and goes back to the 1820s and 1830s at best. But even that information was frequently modified within the generational transmission process that made it reach us today."
Although the origins are difficult to trace, today fado is commonly regarded as simply a form of song which can be about anything, but must follow a certain traditional structure. In popular belief, fado is a form of music characterized by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor, and infused with a sentiment of resignation, fate and melancholy.