Paulo Bragança

Vocalist Paulo Braganca has updated the sorrowful character of Portugal’s fado, a blues-inflected tradition, by fusing its core with modern rhythmic elements. Although fado continues to anchor his compositions, he replaced conventional instrumentation with flamenco pulses, hip-hop grooves, and touches of Brazilian pop. In a 1996 interview he observed, “when things aren’t happy, we have to love our sadness—that’s what fado is to me.” Born in colonial Angola to Portuguese parents, Braganca encountered fado in childhood; his father, an amateur vocalist, regularly played vintage fado discs at home. Shortly after the family resettled in Portugal, Braganca, then nine, began performing in the streets and fado houses of Lisbon’s Bairro Alto district. A 1988 appearance at a fado evening organized by the Lisbon Academic Association prompted him to treat music as a profession. While laying down his first single in 1991, he attracted the attention of David Byrne, who placed him on the Luaka Bop roster. Braganca’s debut album, Amai, issued in 1996, mixed both traditional and newly written fado pieces sung in Portuguese with an English-language rendition of Nick Cave’s “Sorrow’s Child.”