Pedro Moutinho

O FADO EM NÓS – “The Fado (Faith/Destiny) Within Us” Pedro Moutinho’s new album recalls a fado that exists within each one of us, a fado in our way uncovered, revealing and fulfilling in itself.
First, in the traditional melodies bringing echo of so many artists who have formerly sung and played them, evoking emotions of former listeners in the various spaces where this music took place. Its title “O FADO EM NÓS” points towards the fado inside us in many dimensions. It is unique in a way that can’t remain unnoticed. It is Pedro Moutinho. Who takes us all magisterially in this trip, its fado dressed by people’s time.
Recorded in the heart of the memory of fado singers – Museu do Fado (Fado Museum) – out of the conventional recording studios, this album has the taste of a live performance with all of us as virtual listeners.
It brings us the ritual that fulfills itself simultaneously, where the exceptional Portuguese guitar, guitar and an outstanding acoustic bass breathe together with the voice and intensify the touch when they feel it scathing and daring, playfully accentuating the irony or the invitation to the dance of life, or trembling, after an anticipated silence, when the solo voice reveals the utter dimension of loneliness.
It brings a wish: “Take me with you” (Leva-me contigo). To all but especially those to whom fado is not an obvious alleged. A fado’s wish recalling that fado itself has always been enchanted by other musical ambiences, nurtured by different life experiences, with senses alert to all that happens within us and the world.
And it brings a message: Come to dance (Vem ao baile), calling life to fulfill itself.
This is O FADO EM NÓS. It comes from within. It is Pedro Moutinho inspired, mature, an echo of fado stories made our own, when we have a sense of belonging. In US (NÓS), there are evocations of fado singers like Hermínia Silva or Carlos Ramos. There are intemporal poets like Fernando Pessoa or Alexandre O’Neill and the great contemporary poets of our present Manuela de Freitas, Amélia Muge ou Mª do Rosário Pedreira.
Pedro Moutinho makes to the traditional fados what his family does, when revealing their characteristics: the grandmother’s look, the smile of the uncle, the hands of the father. In these similarities, he reinforces what we are and the uniqueness and contemporaneity within ourselves. He places fado in front of the mirror like he does with us. He brings us back to who we are. He renews himself and us. He modernises our senses while listening to him.
Pedro Moutinho is back. To listen to him is to discover him in ourselves.
It is like being another tense guitar string, vibrating, remaining in the form of an inner resonance. Here and always. A classic.
“In the year that he turns 40 years old, he signs his mature work, his masterpiece. O Fado em Nós (…) has the most genuine and noble fado singer throb in the voice of the youngest of three remarkable brothers.
Listen to him as you would in a fado house, with the silence blessing.” Nuno Pacheco in Ípsilon, Público “More secure, much more secure, Pedro Moutinho reaches to his fourth album with the weight of seriousness and the shiver of life. Balanced, O Fado em Nós is a kind of life experiences accumulation, of unexpected moments and truths. He has no trapeze but dances up there without fear, without limitations as well – unless the perfect diction that this time reaches. It is an album without reveries, plain.” Alexandra Carita in Expresso “PEDRO Moutinho has a deep voice, (…) that knows how to breath silence and kiss words. (…) It is a voice that knows how to smile and dance, cry and suffer.”