Songs from Andalus

Fado: Casa de Fados

(from Carlos Saura’s film Fados)

 

Lyrics (from the film’s subtitles):

First singer:
A lost friendship can never return
It’s a forged firendship
 That jokingly comes and goes
It’s a forged friendship
that jokingly comes and goes
No one gives a thing
If behind that gesture there is no value
Only a friend can give love without receiveing

 

Second:
My mother I sing tonight
For the day has punished me
And in the silence of things
I find a friendly voice
And in the silence of things
I find a friendly voice
My mother I cry tonight
for the love I am drowning in
For the words of life
Have no other world
For I am this song
Mother, So hurt
I wear this body at night
without fate but with fado
I wear this body at night
without fate but with fado

 

Third:
Maybe fado will tell me what no one wants to say
That is why I chase it so that I may understand myself
That is why I chase it so that I may understand myself
My love I have sung
Under the last sky
Because I surrender myself in every last fado as if it were the first
Maybe fado does not ask me for everything I give it
So even when I forget
It does not forget me
So even when I forget
It does not forget me

 

Carminho (my favorite):
I cried for not seeing you
For seeing you I cry
I cried for not seeing you
For seeing you I now cry
Harder for wanting
Wanting to see you all the time
Time rushes past
When you talk and I listen
But the hours of our life
Each has a moment
Stay beside me
And never leave
So that my heart poor thing
May live life in an hour
So that my heart poor thing
May live life in an hour
Riberio:
Do not be afraid of fame, ill-famed Alfama
Do not be afraid of fame, ill-famed Alfama
Fame sometimes defames good honorable people

 

Other guy:
Fadistas come with me
Listen to the street fado
And sing a street duel
In a charming ancient quarter

 

Riberio:
Let’s go as I have said
You will see when the day dawns
How fun the revelry was
In the old Alfama quarter
Do not be afraid of fame ill-famed Alfama

 

Other guy:
I know of the world you speak
But surely I know wrong
I know what the world is saying
But surely out of spite
For was it always not true
That tales were told?
 Many people there lived
Very quiet lives
Which in a spiteful way are muddied
Fame
Sometimes defames
Good honorable people

Flamenco: Camarón-Rosa Maria

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=AdBxXNmTXfI

(rough translation of the lyrics)

Country Wildflowers
Water from the clear lagoon
That’s how I describe the colors of your face

Rosa Maria, Rosa Maria
if you loved me, how happy I would be

I envy the flowers
the mirror where you look
the brush of your hair
and the air that you breathe
and the air that you breathe

Rosa Maria, Rosa Maria
if you loved me, how happy I would be

She’s joy and beauty
and grace in her walk
and even your laugh is beautiful
and different from the rest

Rosa Maria, Rosa Maria
if you loved me, how happy I would be

Rosa Maria, Rosa Maria
if you loved me, how happy I would be

 

Camarón and Paco de Lucia por Siguriyas

 

Andalusian mawwal: Omar Metioui-El secreto encuentro

Lyrics from Ibn ‘Arabi’s tarjuman al-ashwaq:

ألا يا نسيم الريح بلغ مها نجد      بأني على ما تعلمون من العهد

فان كان حقا ما تقول و عندها    إليّ من الشوق المبرّح ما عندي

إليها ففي حرّ الظهيرة نلتقي    بخيمتها سرا على أصدق الوعد

translation:
O Morning breeze, go tell the gazelles of Najd
   that, “I’m true to the vow you know of”
And if what she says is true and she
   has for me the desperate longing I have
for her, then in the heat of noon we’ll meet
   in her tent secretly, with the most sincere promise