Amália da Piedade Rodrigues GCSE, GCIH, (July 23, 1920 – October 6, 1999), also known as Amália Rodrigues (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɐˈmaliɐ ʁuˈdɾiɡɨʃ]) was a Portuguese singer and actress. She was known as the "Rainha do Fado" ("Queen of Fado") and was most influential in popularizing the fado worldwide. She was one of the most important figures in the genre's development, and enjoyed a 40-year recording and stage career. Amália' performances and choice of repertoire pushed fado's boundaries and helped redefine it and reconfigure it for her and subsequent generations. In effect, Amália wrote the rulebook on what fado could be and on how a female fadista — or fado singer — should perform it, to the extent that she remains an unsurpassable model and an unending source of repertoire for all those who came afterwards. Amália enjoyed an extensive international career between the 1950s and the 1970s, although in an era where such efforts were not as easily quantified as today. She was the main inspiration to other well-known international fado and popular music artists such as Madredeus, Dulce Pontes and Mariza.

Amália Rodrigues remains today as Portugal's most famous artist and singer, a woman who was born into an almost destitute family and who grew to become not only Portugal's major star but also an internationally acclaimmed artist and singer, whose career spanned for 55 long years of activity, recording songs in several languages (specially Portuguese, Spanish, French, English and Italian), versions of her own songs, most famously 'Coimbra' (April In Portugal), and performing all over the world, achieving tremendous success in countries like France, Italy, Spain, the USA, Mexico, Brasil, Romania, Japan and The Netherlands, among many others.

Her personality and charisma, the beauty of her face and her extraordinary timbre of voice, gave depth and intense life to her chant: the impression she made on the public, her immediacy and the natural way she empathized with her public were tremendous and attracted more and more admirers throughout the world.

As of her death in 1999 Amália had received more than 40 decorations and honours from all over the world (mostly France, including the Légion d'Honneur, Lebanon, Portugal, Spain, Israel and Japan).

Most importantly Amália put fado as a musical genre on the map of world music, in dictionaries, libraries and musical essays. She paved the way for the generations that would follow, and that continue her legacy.

Despite official documents which give her date of birth as July 23, Amália always said her birthday was July 1, 1920. She was born in Lisbon, in the rua Martim Vaz (Martim Vaz Street), neighborhood of Pena. Her father was a trumpet player and cobbler from Fundão who returned there when Amália was just over a year old, leaving her to live in Lisbon with her maternal grandmother in a deeply Catholic environment until she was 14, when her parents returned to the capital and she moved back in with them.

She sang from the early age of 4 or 5, in the streets of Lisbon, playfully and naturally, and started singing as an amateur as early as 1935.

Her miserable childhood in Lisbon, almost destitute and having to do odd jobs (one of which included selling fruit in Lisbon's quays), gave her a very important outlook on life, which would always be present in soulfullness of her chant.

After a few years of amateur performances, Amália' first professional engagement in a fado venue took place in 1939, and she quickly became a regular guest star in stage revues. There she met Frederico Valério, a classically-trained composer who, recognising the potential in such a voice, wrote expansive melodies custom-designed for Amália’ voice, breaking the rules of fado by adding orchestral accompaniment. One of these composed fados was 'Fado do Ciúme'. Others were 'Ai Mouraria', 'Que Deus Me Perdoe', 'Não Sei Porque Te Foste Embora', among many others.

In the meantime Amália became Portugal's most renowned singer, and she became first the toast of Lisbon and then the toast of Portugal, attracting friends and admirers both from the people, then from the aristocracy. Artists, poets, politicians, former Kings and bankers were attracted by her personality and charisma.

At the same time Amália began an interesting career in the movies: her box office power was a major asset, and she debuted in the movies in 1946 with 'Capas Negras', followed by a major success, which is still Amália's most known movie, 'Fado' (1946).

Her Portuguese popularity began to extend abroad with trips to Spain, a lengthy stay in Brazil (where, in 1945, she made her first recordings on Brazilian label Continental) and Paris (1949). In 1950, while performing at the Marshall Plan international benefit shows, she introduces 'April in Portugal' to international audiences, under its original title "Coimbra".

In the early fifties, the patronage of acclaimed Portuguese poet David Mourão-Ferreira marked the beginning of a new phase: Amália sang with many of the country's greatest poets, and some wrote lyrics specifically for her. Though Amália came from an extremely poor family, she had an intuitive intelligence which made her admire the arts and made her choose with increasing criteria and taste her own songs and their words. Her relationship with poetry would once again contribute to major changes in traditional fado: not only popular poets produced words for the songs, but the so-called great poets started contributing and writing specifically for her. The 'grand poetry' crossed its paths with those of fado. Keep Reading about her