Portugal is famous for its special songs called Fado - The fado songs are emotionally painful and the music is often heard in the neighborhood. When you come as a tourist in Bairro Alto, it can be easy to forget that it is also a district that holds great poverty and that the fado is actually rooted in a reality that is mostly markedly different from ours.

Fado is the name of the local music - It is social realism of the heavier kind - typically sung by large women in their "best age", but there are also exceptions - e.g. deceased “super-fado singer” Amália Rodrigues. Fado can i.a. be heard at Café Luso.

Fado (Portuguese - Fate) is a music genre that can be traced back to the 1820s in Lisbon, Portugal, but probably has much earlier origins. Fado historian and researcher Rui Vieira Nery says that "the only reliable information about Fado's history was transmitted orally and at best dates back to the 1820s and 1830s.

As so aptly expressed on Wikipedia, Amália Rodrigues is for fado what Mozart is for classical music and when in Lisbon, she can be heard quite often and if you take e.g. a taxi, then it is by no means unusual that "Radio Amália" is on.