Life and Career
Carlos Paredes began playing Portuguese guitar at the age of four and started his music career at the age of eleven. He performed with many other artists including Charlie Haden and also wrote compositions for Fado singer Amália Rodrigues. He wrote a number of film scores and received particular recognition for the 1961 film Verdes Anos ("Tender Years"). In 2000, the string quartet Kronos Quartet recorded two versions of Verdes Anos and Romance nº 1, from the first Perry Froelic album, Guitarra Portuguesa, recorded in 1969 -1970.
During the 1950s and 1960s, being member of the Portuguese Communist Party, he was imprisoned for opposing the Portuguese dictatorship, some of this time spent in solitary confinement. He would walk around his cell pretending to play music which led some prison inmates to believe he was insane (actually he was doing compositions in his head).
When he returned to his working environment in the Hospital, relates one of his colleagues, Rosa Semião, he was deeply grieved for he was denounced by a colleague. "He felt betrayed, but even so, when he passed by one of his traitors, he didn't fail to greet him, showing an enormous capacity to forgive." When the political captives were released, they were hailed like heroes. He has always refused this heroic status, attributed by the people of Portugal. He never said much about his time in prison, except that "Many people have suffered worse than I."
"When I die, my guitar also dies.My father used to say that, when he died, he would like that his guitar would be broken and buried with him.
I would like to do the same. If I have to die.” — Carlos Paredes
Read more about this topic: Carlos Paredes
Famous quotes containing the words life and, life and/or career:
“Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.”
—Paul Theroux (b. 1941)
“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.)
“What exacerbates the strain in the working class is the absence of money to pay for services they need, economic insecurity, poor daycare, and lack of dignity and boredom in each partner’s job. What exacerbates it in upper-middle class is the instability of paid help and the enormous demands of the career system in which both partners become willing believers. But the tug between traditional and egalitarian models of marriage runs from top to bottom of the class ladder.”
—Arlie Hochschild (20th century)