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By Adelina Pereira - Adiaspora.com
On the afternoon of Sunday, November 17, 2002, the St. Christopher House Music School presented an afternoon of Portuguese music. St. Christopher House Community Centre is located on Dundas Street West, right in the very heart of the Portuguese community of Toronto. The program included guest artists Dina Maria, Mário Jorge, Otília de Jesus, António Amaro, Leonardo Medeiros, Hernâni Raposo and the Portuguese Women 55+ Choir, who performed before a large audience curiously consisting of an assortment of people of diverse linguistic and cultural origins, giving them a whiff of our homeland, Portugal. Sherry Squires, the young, dynamic St. Christopher House Music School Coordinator, organized the afternoon. St. Christopher House, a non-profit organization, has rendered invaluable service to the surrounding neighbourhood through the innumerous community support programs it has developed over the years. A great part of the clients who frequent this center are, in fact, of Portuguese origin. The Portuguese Women 55+, is an association, the members of which are women over 55, its main objective being to better the quality of life among senior Portuguese women by keeping them active and involved in the community they live in. The group has close ties with St. Christopher House, collaborating and participating in many of the Centre's activities. Sherry Squires, in a praiseworthy attempt to make music accessible and available to all, organized this fundraising event, the proceeds of which will go toward music lesson subsidies for low-income families in the neighbourhood. With a full house and a receptive and warm audience, the afternoon was a resounding success. The first part of the program was dedicated to Lisbon Fado (there being another more elitist school of Fado in the university town of Coimbra). After a brief bilingual introduction and explanation (ENG/PT) on Fado by Sherry and Flo da Silva, who acted as the afternoon's MCs, Antonio Amaro, Leonardo Medeiros and Hernâni Raposo on the Portuguese, classical and bass guitars, took the stage, opening the program with two instrumental medleys of a number of well known and loved fados. Mário Jorge, a local fado singer, ensued and moved us all with his heartfelt rendition of four beautiful fado tunes. Who would have known that such a small, fragile body could house such a large and passionate voice? A distinguished performer of our national song, the fado, Mario Jorge delights all who hear him with his excellent diction and phrasing, giving life, form and colour to the poems he sings.
Next a superb rendition by Dina Maria of some of Amália, the famous fado diva's best-known hits. Starting her performance off with "Que Estranha Forma de Ser" (What a Strange Manner of Being), this fadista (fado singer), born in the mountainous northern town of Braganza, proceeded to paint in sound images of the Lisbon landscapes on the canvas of her audience, her melodious and cadenced voice evoking all the hustle and bustle of the legendary Old Quarters of Lisbon - Alfama, Mouraria and Bairro Alto.
Here, in these distant lands of the New World, to listen to the mournful chords our fado, well played and sung, is to once more smell the sea air and the morning mist slowly and enigmatically rising over the Tagus River like some beautiful, diaphanous veil of a Moorish dancer of some past era, to reveal the sprawling white splendour of the city of Lisbon in all its morning glory. - the cries of newspaper vendors announcing the latest news, the fishwives winding their way in and out of narrow alleys, plying their goods in the Old Quarters, the shoeshine placing his box and brushes on a strategic corner of a city street to await the passing trade, the smell of fresh coffee and bread emanating from the entrails of the city's many sidewalk cafés… Making our way back from memory lane to the community hall at St. Christopher House, it is now time for a short interval during which were served some typical Portuguese delicacies like chouriço (Portuguese sausage), favas à moda dos Açores (stewed fava beans typical of the Azores), pão de milho (corn bread) all downed with a glass of a full bodied Portuguese red, as is the custom. It was now the turn of the Portuguese Women 55+ Choir to take to the stage and they did, with extraordinary gusto, delighting the audience with lively renditions of a number of Portuguese traditional folksongs. But more importantly, these women gave us a valuable life lesson by being the living examples of how the autumn of our years has a meaning of its own, to be lived to the fullest, uncovering at each step down life's path new and exciting horizons there for the taking.
Otília de Jesus, a well-known community performer, filled the third and final part of the program. She performed a number of popular tunes, ending the afternoon on a gay, festive note, with a lively, foot tapping Christmas Carol.
That cold, wintry and snowbound afternoon we all returned home, happy, warm and joyously uplifted, as only the bonding among men of goodwill can make us feel. Adiaspora.com wishes to congratulate the
organizers of this event and thank them for taking such an active
interest in "things Portuguese".
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