1001 Albums
en
Create account

35 albums · 1967–2024

The Portuguese guitar, the twelve strings of fado

· 1 min read · by 1001 Albums

A Portuguese guitar with its pear-shaped body and fan-shaped tuning head
The fan of tuning screws at the head of a Portuguese guitarA mural of Carlos Paredes playing the Portuguese guitar on the side of a building in Amadora
A Portuguese guitar. Photo: Šarūnas Burdulis, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · The tuning head of a Portuguese guitar. Photo: Tiago J. G. Fernandes, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. · Carlos Paredes on a mural in Amadora. Photo: Acediscovery, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The guitarra portuguesa is a cittern with a pear-shaped body and six courses of double strings, tuned by a fan of screws at its head. It is played with the fingernails in a bright tremolo, beside the fado singer in Lisbon and on its own in Coimbra.

Artur and Carlos Paredes made it a concert instrument. The list has Carlos Paredes from his first record to his duets with Charlie Haden, José Nunes, António Chaínho, Pedro Caldeira Cabral, Custódio Castelo and Mário Pacheco, and the players of today, Ângelo Freire, José Manuel Neto, Marta Pereira da Costa and Gaspar Varela.

The list has 35 records from 1967 to 2024. About 29 hours of music, 4 days of a few records each.

By genre

World 96%Classical 2%Jazz 1%Other 1%
  • World 96%
  • Classical 2%
  • Jazz 1%
  • Other 1%

The genres named most: guitarra portuguesa, world, fado, classical, instrumental, jazz.

The colours of the covers

A stripe for each cover, in the colour Tidal picks from it, sorted by hue; the greys at the end.

Where the music comes from

Music from 2 countries: Portugal 34, Brazil 1. The deeper the colour, the more albums: one, two to four, five to nine, ten and more.

The 1960s

The 1970s

The 1980s

The 1990s

The 2000s

The 2010s

The 2020s

More lists

Lists of Instruments first, then others; all of them on the blog. The blog.

29 albums · 1976–2024

The kora of Mali, the harp-lute of the jeli

· 1 min read

The kora is the harp-lute of the jeli, the griots of Mali, Guinea, Senegal and the Gambia: 21 strings over a large calabash covered in cowhide, played with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands.

World 89%Blues 3%Classical 3%Other 5%
  • World 89%
  • Blues 3%
  • Classical 3%
  • Other 5%

Read and see the list