José Pracana

José Pracana was born in Ponta Delgada, São Miguel (Azores), in 1946.

In 1964 he began his fado career as an amateur and has remained an amateur until today. As a Portuguese guitar player he accompanied regularly Alfredo Marceneiro, Teresa Tarouca, Maria do Rosário Bettencourt, João Sabrosa, Vicente da Câmara, Manuel de Almeida, Alcindo Carvalho, João Ferreira Rosa, João Braga, Carlos Zel, Carlos Guedes de Amorim, Orlando Duarte, Arminda Alvernaz, among others.

Between 1969 and 1972 he managed Arreda in Cascais, a project he set aside to begin working at TAP.

In addition to his participation in many different cultural events in Mainland Portugal, Azores and Madeira, he has also performed in Macao, Spain, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Denmark, Hungary, Israel, Thailand, Zaire, Republic of South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, United States of America, Canada and Mexico.

From 1968 onwards he participated in many television programmes, with special reference to Zip-Zip (1969), Curto – Circuito (1970), Um Dois Três (1985), Noites de Gala (1987) Piano Bar (1988) Regresso ao Passado (1991) and Zona Mais (1995), among others.

He was the author of two series of programmes on Fado produced for RTP, i.e. “Vamos aos Fados”, a five-programme series (1976) and “Silêncio que se vai contar o Fado”, another five-programme series filmed at the invitation of RTP Açores (1992).

He collaborated in the edition of Um Século de Fado, (Ediclube, 1999) and organised for EMI/Valentim de Carvalho, based on the Abbey Road studios, a digital remastering of 78-rpm copies for the consecutive editions of collection Biografias do Fado (from 1994 to 1998).

Among other achievements, he collaborated in the project Todos os Fados (Visão, Abril 2005) and in 2005 he received the Amália Rodrigues Award in the Amateur Fado class.

In 2007 he organised at Museu do Fado a series dedicated to Fado memories, in which he paid artistic tribute to Armando Augusto Freire, Alfredo Marceneiro, José António Sabrosa and Carlos Ramos. He was the co-author of the RTP programme “Trovas Antigas, Saudade Louca”.

José Pracana died on December 26 2016 and, in 2019, the Fado Museum paid him a heartfelt tribute through a temporary exhibition celebrating the life and work of this eternal amateur musician.