The definition of the word ‘fado’ is technically ‘fate’, though the Portuguese meaning bound up with this term is more complex. The music itself can be fairly closely compared with that of Greek rebetika – also the American blues or the original working-class tango music of Argentina and Uruguay – and similarly takes it’s common subject matter from the various cruel realities of the world. Though perhaps what distinguishes fado in character is it’s often poised acceptance of the pains of life rather than protestation or resistance – as writer Paul Vernon says “It speaks with a quiet dignity born of the realisation that any mortal desire or plan is at risk of destruction by powers beyond individual control”

Death Is Not The End compile here a spine-tingling collection of fado recordings, taken from records issued in the mid 1910s through to the 1930s. The fado’s Lisbon and Coimbra variants are presented here by some of the music’s earliest recorded stars – spanning a time period leading up to the emergence of the fado’s all-conquering star, Amlia Rodrigues.