Teresinha Landeiro
Teresinha Landeiro
Teresinha Landeiro is one of the youngest voices in fado at the moment. Born in Azeitão, south of Lisbon, in 1996, her contribution to this anthology is characterised by her youthful representation of the contemporary world.
In the recent wave of fado’s re-conceptualisation, occasioned by the explosion of tourism in Lisbon and the touristification of intangible heritage, Teresinha Landeiro contributes to symbolically strengthening Portugal’s connection to its past identity—nostalgic and sad, wedded to the sea and its torments—while at the same time revealing her youthful side, gesturing towards a certain empowerment of young women.
On her debut album, Namoro [Courtship], from 2018, the poem ‘Sonhos Meus’ [‘Dreams of Mine’], which is marked by fado’s characteristically strong emotional expressivity, brings to the fore the imaginative repertoire of anguished feelings that still pulsate throughout this musical genre: ‘My dreams are suffused with nostalgia, /
I recall the sad ones and the joyous ones. / No more do I dream in the colour of the sea. / Caught in a tangle of storms, / a ship heavy with sorrows / has wrecked within my song’.
In her album Agora [Now], from 2021, which includes several poems of her own authorship, Teresinha’s message emphasises the irreverent way she inhabits her
role as a woman. In ‘Batom’ [‘Lipstick’], she states with conviction that ‘I don’t wear lipstick / because I have the gift / of knowing that today / is the day you’ll kiss me / […] / I just wear a smile, / I’ll make a move / stir up some trouble / in your heart’. The poem ‘Amor aos molhos’ [‘Love Overflowing’], in a tone of intense emotion, deals with perhaps the longest-lasting theme in all fado: ‘Love overflowing, my eyes confess / when I see you at night as you sing; / I say what I feel, / and I swear it's no lie / that I long for your heart to be mine’.
