Meet Sonia Shirsat, India's lone internationally acclaimed fadista

She aims to revive fado and widen its appeal to non-Portuguese speakers

Music transcends language, they say. Thus does someone with no knowledge of Telugu thrill to M S Subbulakshmi singing an Annamacharya kriti. Just as a non-Francophone person may be moved to tears by Edith Piaf declaring she “has no regrets”. And you don’t need to be Portuguese to know that Amalia Rodrigues is singing about love and loss and longing. 

Rodrigues was, of course, singing fado, Portugal’s best loved and best-known musical genre. Unexpectedly, there is a powerful voice in our own country singing those same songs of love and loss — in Portuguese. Sonia Shirsat is the country’s one and