The Portuguese blues has soul but isn’t sad.
A summer Saturday night in Lisbon, and in a square in the old Graça district the local community listens to an evening of live fado – the Portuguese blues. Through the days, along the city’s steep streets of distinctive small square limestone cobbles, you can often hear the sound of the Lisbon station Rádio Amália playing in houses and shops. Named after the Portuguese fadista Amália Rodrigues (1920-1999) , the station transmits fado on a loop – songs sung traditionally in cafes and taverns, usually by an older woman, about longing for a lover, or the past, or men lost at sea. A typical lyric runs: “In the mouth of a seaman/ In the fragile sailing ship/ The hurtful song fades…”
My friend Maria, who lives in Graça, insists fado “has soul – but isn’ t sad ”. After weeks of addiction to the station, I agree. Fado has brouhaha, wit, lust. Some of the best new numbers are sung by the gorgeous young Gisela João, who always performs in her music videos with a melancholy breeze disarranging her hair and wearing a pair of trainers. She’s a favourite of the station.
Being associated with the era of Salazar’s fascist dictatorship, fado at one time looked as if it might fade, and yet enthusiasm remains solid in Lisbon – especially for any solo on the 12-stringed Portuguese guitarra, which sounds like a harpsichord crossed with a bouzouki. At the concert in Graça, the crowd glows under street-lamps, nodding and applauding the music. Family dogs lie on the cobbles. Couples occasionally get up to slow-dance, and a restaurant hurries out plates of fried baby hake.
When eventually I get back to my room, I switch on Amália and hear about a special event at the local fado museum. “We are waiting for you, ” says the closing line of the ad, wistfully – very fado. So many of the best songs are simply about missing friends. As usual, I find it hard to switch the station off; each ballad is so perfectly contained. But soon I’ m woken by the sound of a man singing fado live, and magnificently impromptu, from the ramparts above my open window, met by a smattering of drunken applause as the last of the concert-goers wend home, the dawn-saffron sky a blur of swooping swifts.
I watch property programmes because I like inflicting pain on myself.
That’s the only conclusion I, as a millennial, can come to. I must be a masochist, because I enjoy seeing people with more money than I’ ll ever have buying homes I’ ll never be able to afford.
There was a time when, for me at least, watching property shows was an act of dissent. In the mid 2000s, catching Homes Under the Hammer during its 10am timeslot as a teenager was the ultimate sign of rebellion, because you should, by rights, be in school. Ditto with Location Location, Escape to the Country or any of the litany of property programmes which have been going strong since the turn of the century.
Now, though, I realise that these property shows are not simply designed for adolescents pulling sickies. In fact, I’ m not the prime target audience for these shows at all. The people who actually appear on these shows are whiter than white, comfortably middle-class and able to splash the cash from years of good jobs. They couldn’ t be further away from a working class, white-passing millennial in an age defined by the mortgage crisis and subsequent financial crash.
It wasn’t always this way. When Location, Location began in 2000,20 per cent of young people and 80 per cent of middle-aged people owned their own home. Rewind a decade, to 1991, and just north of 35 per cent of 16-24 year olds owned their own home. By 2013-2014, that figure had fallen to under 10 per cent. On average, house prices have risen 7 per cent each year since 1980. Job security is hugely decreased. The average deposit needed to buy a property in London, where jobs are most plentiful, has risen by £76,000 in the last decade.
In short, in 2017, watching a property programme as a millennial is simply a reminder that the ladders have all been pulled up.
To add insult to injury, political attempts to help young renters, like that of Ed Miliband’s 2015 manifesto, face a backlash from Britain’s well-organised and vocal landlord class. It’s a small comfort that both Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn have proposed reforms, since this parliament looks likely to be dominated by Brexit. On the plus side, as far as sofa bums are concerned, appalling renting conditions has spawned a new genre of gritty reality TV typified by When the Landlords Moved In.
So why do I keep watching programmes about people I do not resemble buying houses I cannot afford? Simply because property programmes make undeniably good viewing. Teenagers argue on Twitter about which of them would be the better replacement for Grand Designs’ iconic presenter Kevin McCloud. One friend I spoke to about the show called it “daydream material”.
“It’s really satisfying to watch”, she said. “There’s something about seeing people be able to build their dream houses that’s interesting. I like thinking about what my house would look like.” Another said that “it’s a nosiness thing combined with seeing how the other half live”. Another friend I spoke to, a couple of years younger than me, couldn’ t describe the allure specifically, simply saying “I just like houses”.
Twitter hosts a number of young fans who also like houses:
Everyone is going out and doing things for the summer and I’m sitting here eating yogurt and watching Homes Under The Hammer
— Bree (@xbreeashe) 4 August 2017
As tragic as it is, I can’t stop watching homes under the hammer
— D/\NE (@DaneAnderson16) 4 August 2017
The real question is why isn’t Homes Under The Hammer on in A prime time Saturday night slot?
— Ally (@itsalicewilson) 15 August 2017
Why indeed, Ally. Why indeed.
Other millennial users are brokenhearted that Kirstie and Phil, the pair who host Location Location, are not, in fact, a real couple:
Omg how are kirstie and Phil from location married to other people I feel like my whole life has been a lie
— Tom (@Txmm_14) 16 May 2017
Finding out Phil and kirstie from location weren’t married
— Gwen (@0vxrdose) 10 June 2017
There’s something else here though, aside from on-screen sexual tension. It goes back to that idea of “daydream material”. It’s an image of what could be – of what should be. You can’ t help but be excited for the homeowners featured on the programme, especially if they’ re buying their first home or expanding to a home for life.
