Some trace Fado to the songs of the Muslim population that once lived in the Iberian Peninsula. Others tie it to the lundum, a kind of song brought from Brazil by Portuguese sailors around 1820. A third theory looks to the folk music of northern Portugal.
None of these is proven, and probably none is right on its own: Fado appeared in a port city, and ports mix whatever reaches them.
How Fado reached Coimbra
Students carried the melodies out of Lisbon when they left for university, and Coimbra became a centre of its own: by 1889 or 1890, when Augusto Hilário came to study medicine, Fado was already there. Coimbra’s Fado grew out of academic life and still exists alongside Lisbon’s. They are two Fados, not one Fado and a variant.
Recorded in Porto, listed by UNESCO
A fadista sings, accompanied by a Portuguese guitar and a classical guitar. The first known recording of Fado was made in Porto in 1900. In 2011 UNESCO listed that practice, with the singers, guitarists, poets and listeners who keep it, as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.