Susan Buckland: Sad songs say so much

One thing was certain, I would spend a night in Lisbon listening to fado. The yearning folk music of the Portuguese had stayed with me from student days when, in a dimly lit bar, I had listened to those songs of sadness and longing.

I set off to recapture the experience. The bittersweet melancholy of fado had got to a tourist in the club I entered. She had fallen asleep but left with the rest of the tourists at 11pm, the hour when the Portuguese began arriving. Until 11pm there had been good fado. The singers who now took to the stage were compelling.

And there was to be an encore the following evening. I had been exploring the old town where, in the intimacy of tangled alleys, life goes on in cheerful profusion. An alfresco table piled with small shellfish caught my eye. And the four men around it. One of them brandished a toothpick topped by a cockle-like shell.

"Try one," he said.

Why not? The shellfish looked inviting and the smiling quartet seemed friendly. The men introduced themselves. Duarte, Carlos, Alfredo and Fernando. More shellfish, called caracol do mar, and Sagres beer were ordered. We conversed in a cocktail of Portuguese, Italian and Spanish, which became clearer with each replenished glass.

Then Fernando leaned forward. "Fado," he said. "Do you know about fado?" He licked the beer froth from his moustache and looked earnest. I explained how I had gone to a place where the tourists departed as the cognoscenti arrived and the singers grew more accomplished as the night wore on.

Fernando whacked his beer down on the tablecloth and sent a pile of empty shells flying. "So you know about fado. Then you know something of us." A button popped from his shirt as he spread his arms with enthusiasm. "Understand, Susanna, that fado is the music of our soul. It enters the head and flows to heart. Here."

Fernando was now standing, his left hand clapped on an exposed chest. The four friends often sang fado together. The late great fadista Amalia Rodrigues once said, "I don't sing fado. Fado sings me." Duarte invited me to join the friends next evening for such an experience. Sadly, that could not be as I had to leave Lisbon next day. We drowned our disappointment with a final round of Sagres. When it was time to go Fernando took charge. "I will drive you and we will have fado," he said. He revved his old diesel-fired Mercedes and switched on the tape machine.

Waving goodbye to the others, we drove off to my hotel with the haunting fado turned up above the roar of the traffic. Fernando interpreted the pining love songs, becoming more impassioned as we went along. One song stirred him so powerfully that he stopped in the middle of the road and gripped my arm, ignoring the hooting horns.

"Lindo, lindo, lindo [beautiful, so beautiful]. Do you understand that the man is singing of his love for a woman who does not return his love?" Fernando wrenched the car into gear and zoomed off again. "One more song before you go," he said when we reached the hotel.

What about the football game? I reminded him that he and his mates had planned to watch a televised match.

Fernando kissed both my cheeks. "Come back again soon for fado with Fernando."

I watched the diesel belch from his car as he took off round the corner and waited outside until the lamenting strains of fado were lost to the night.