The Emilia Moraes Story: Final Chapter. Along with Mary Jean Blasdale the curator of the New Bedford Whaling Museum until her retirement in 2006 who researched, wrote, and published the Artists of New Bedford: A Biographical Dictionary (1990), Emilia Moraes Fortier Duwart, was also one of the two women who inspired us to start The Artists Index.

Emilia was my mother, a Fado singer and one of the few of her generation to have their career documented. Her story appears in A Picture History of New Bedford – Volume Two. In the 50s and 60s, she was a single mother living in New York City with her infant son (me) and pursued a career singing Fado, the national passion of the Portuguese people.

She performed both as a Fado and club singer with a repertoire of American standards. Her performance venues were primarily at Portuguese-American clubs on a circuit ranging from Ludlow and Chicopee, Massachusetts through the greater New Bedford area to Valley Falls in Rhode Island and, Newark and Elizabeth, New Jersey.

Because of the sound and power of her voice, she was called Little Amalia by her Fado fans. Amalia Rodrigues, the icon, the paragon, and the definition of Fado itself. Emilia was born to her Portuguese parents, Eduardo Moraes and Luzia Antunes in Yonkers, New York. Along with her elder sister Eduina and their parents, the family moved the family back to the mainland of Portugal during the Great Depression to escape the Socialist backlash (Eduardo is suspected of having Socialist ties).

They settled in Caldas da Rainha due to the efforts of her mother’s brother Faustino Antunes. It was there under the dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar and up to the end of World War Two, where Emilia started to demonstrate her ability to sing doing her chores or to pass away the time away. She was forced to return to the United States to escape the Salazar regime and boarded the freighter S.S. Nacala in September at the end of the War. Arriving at the Port of Philadelphia, she went to live with her uncle and aunt in the north end of New Bedford, Massachusetts.

For more information about her, please read the In-Focus Article “The Emilia Moraes Story” originally written in 2012. It was the first article I wrote for the then, The Artists Profiles, the precourser to The Artists Index. It was republished here on December 29, 2019. As I had previously written, “even with any acclaim or fame many fadistas, the women who sang Fado, were considered just a step above women working the streets by some. The Portuguese had not fully assimilated to the American way of life, even by the 50s and 60s.

In Portuguese culture, among other things, the “place” of women was considered in the home and raising children. Due to Emily’s (Emilia) upbringing and her father’s Socialist viewpoints she was emboldened to pursue her career. My mother’s last documented performance was a benefit concert at the Immaculate Conception School auditorium on Earl Street in New Bedford in 1963. Shortly after, she married my stepfather John Duwart and abandoned her pursuit.

In 1985 she returned to Praia de Buarcos, Figueira da Foz, Portugal to care for her aging mother-in-law. Her retirement from the apparel industry as a stitcher and floor lady and an ensuing recession were factors that contributed to her move there permanently. It was something she swore she would never do. Emilia Moraes Fortier Duwart passed away suddenly and unexpectedly in July of this year. She was independent and not plagued by the illnesses of age so common in the States. She had had several occasional bouts of pneumonia and considered it a nuisance. Emilia/Amalia was just two months short of her 98th birthday.

I can still hear her rendition of her favorite Fado, Que Deus Me Perdoi. It is about a woman who sings that, if only she could show you her hidden life and how she suffers quietly and how, if its a a crime or a sin to love Fado and its  stories about lives touched by sadness, longing and unrequited love and unfulfilled dreams, then “may God forgive her” because she is a fadista.

At the very least, I am honored to have had the ability to document her life as a performing artist. I have reached that place I feared. The place and time of her eventual death and the greater fear that her life as a noted singer of Fado is bittersweet. She was in my life for a very long time and the memories of our time together in New York City and her performances will continue to live on in my memories. Her dashed hopes are a constant reminder to me as I struggle with establishing my painting career and balancing it all with responsibilities, duties, and obligations.

Are you or your organization interested in being our guests on an upcoming AHA! livestreaming podcast from the Play Arcade? Do you have a suggestion you would like to share? Please let us know! 

And, if you would like to be a guest on a Southcoast Artists Index Podcast, please let us know! The Artists Index provides our listeners and readers with up close and personal conversations with artists, supporters of the arts, and the cultural impresarios of the South Coast’s remarkable creative community.

We record our podcasts at our Spectrum Marketing Group studio. We also use Zoom to accommodate our guests’ schedules or for those who no longer live on the South Coast of Massachusetts.