Every year, the médiathèque focuses on one country and, during one month, organizes various events with themes of literature, cinema, music, cuisine, etc. In February 2025, the médiathèque organized "Carnet du Portugal," a series of events celebrating Portugal.
As part of that program, I organized a Fado concert! Fado is a traditional Portuguese music genre characterized by expressive, melancholic singing. It appeared in the early 19th century in Lisbon. It’s such an important and unique music genre that it has been inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity since 2011.
The concert took place on Sunday, February 2nd, featuring the singer Mónica Cunha, accompanied by the talented musicians Helder Jardim on classical guitar and Philippe de Sousa on Portuguese guitar.
The concert was a massive success. We organized it in the Espace musique et cinéma. People started to arrive. There were more and more of them. Very quickly, the chairs were filled. We brought more, but people just kept coming. At one point, the guardian of the building told me it was getting dangerous and that we needed to change the room. Luckily, the Salle de spectacle was free, so we asked the boss in charge on Sunday if we could change. She said yes, and we informed the people that there were too many of us and that we would change rooms. We managed to do the move; everybody helped by bringing chairs, and we managed to fill the whole Salle de spectacle. There were 125 people in total! Absolute success! It was truly special to see so many new faces discovering the media library for the first time, and I was extremely happy to see some members of the disabled community, a population we cherish deeply, responding to our invitation and coming to see the concert.
Madame Cunha and the musicians showed wonderful flexibility throughout this process and gave an absolutely fantastic performance in the salle, which was much bigger than planned. People left with full hearts and bright smiles.
For me, this concert was special because it was a way to connect with the ancestry of my girlfriend—her grandparents are Portuguese—and I felt a strong connection to Portugal, enjoying its wonderful melodies and growing as a person.
Long live Fado!