Carlos Paredes (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈkaɾluʃ pɐˈɾeðɨʃ]; 16 February 1925 – 23 July 2004) was a virtuoso Portuguese guitar player and composer. He is regarded as one of the greatest players of Portuguese guitar of all-time.
Born in Coimbra, Portugal, in a family with a long tradition of guitar playing, he was taught to play the Portuguese guitar by his father, Artur Paredes. He composed numerous soundtracks for cinema and theatre, such as the soundtrack for the Portuguese film Os Verdes Anos (1963), which contains his famous piece "Canção Verde Anos". He released several recordings as a solo artist and performed in numerous countries worldwide.
Besides his music career, Paredes also worked in the public service for most of his life. In 1958, during Portugal's dictatorial Estado Novo regime, he was imprisoned for 18 months for joining the Portuguese Communist Party, at the time an illegal organization.
Carlos Paredes was born in Coimbra on 16 February 1925. His father was Artur Paredes, an acclaimed player of Portuguese guitar from Coimbra. His grandfather Gonçalo Paredes, his great-uncle Manuel Paredes and his great-grandfather António Paredes were also guitar players.
Around 1934, aged 9, Paredes and his family moved to Lisbon. He did his primary education at the João de Deus School, and afterwards attended the Passos Manuel Lyceum. While attending the lyceum, he had violin and piano lessons. In 1943, he entered the Chemical-Industrial Engineering Course in Instituto Superior Técnico, but was enrolled for only one year.
He started playing guitar when he was 4 years-old, taught by his father. At age 9, he began accompanying his father on the guitar, in his father's concerts. At age 14, Carlos and Artur Paredes started participating on a weekly show in the Emissora Nacional de Radiodifusão, Portugal's public national radio broadcaster, a show that was created by Artur Paredes himself.
In 1949, he became a public service worker, a job he would retire from only later in life, in November 1986. He worked in the radiography archive of the Hospital de São José, in Lisbon, while maintaining his musical career.
Political affiliation and imprisonment
Paredes grew up in an environment of discreet resistance and political opposition to António Salazar's Estado Novo regime. In 1958, he became a member of the Portuguese Communist Party, which at the time was an illegal organization in Portugal.
In the morning of 26 September 1958, he was arrested by PIDE agents in his workplace in Hospital de São José, on the accusation of belonging to an illegal political party opposing the government. He was kept imprisoned for 18 months. During his time in prison, he composed music in his head. According to some sources, people in the prison thought that Paredes was going insane, walking around his cell pretending to play the guitar, when in fact he was composing.
After his release from prison, he was suspended from his job in the hospital and worked for some years as a delegate of medical propaganda.
After the Carnation Revolution in Portugal, like others who had been political prisoners during the Estado Novo regime, Paredes was seen as a hero. He disliked this status and preferred not to talk about his time in prison, saying that there were people who suffered more than him. He was reinstated to his previous job in the Hospital de São José shortly after the revolution.
Paredes remained a member of the Portuguese Communist Party until his death.
Paredes' first release was a self-titled EP in 1957. He was accompanied by Fernando Alvim on the classical guitar. After this first record, the musical partnership between Paredes and Alvim would last for more than 20 years.
During the 1960s, Paredes composed the soundtracks for numerous Portuguese films. He composed the soundtrack for the 1963 film Os Verdes Anos, directed by Paulo Rocha. The piece "Canção Verdes Anos", which is part of this soundtrack and was also included in his first studio album, became one his most recognizable works. He also composed the soundtracks for the film Fado Corrido (1964), by Jorge Brum do Canto, the film Mudar de Vida (1966), by Paulo Rocha, and contributed to the soundtrack of several short-films: Rendas de Metais Preciosos (1960), by Cândido Costa Pinto; P.X.O. (1962), by Pierre Kast and Jacques Valcroze; As Pinturas do Meu Irmão Júlio (1965), by Manoel de Oliveira; Crónica do Esforço Perdido (1966), by António de Macedo; À Cidade (The City) (1968) and The Colombus Route (1969), by José Fonseca e Costa; and Tráfego e Estiva (1968), by Manuel Guimarães.
In the theatre, he collaborated with José Cardoso Pires and Fernando Gusmão in 1964, with Carlos Avillez in the play Bodas de Sangue and performances of García Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba by the Teatro Experimental de Cascais.
His first studio album, Guitarra Portuguesa, was released in 1967. That same year, he played alongside Amália Rodrigues in her show at the Olympia in Paris, by her invitation. Amália, who was very impressed with his talent, wished to have Paredes accompany her in her touring band, but Paredes declined, citing his father's advice: "If you want to be soloist, you must accompany no-one". Still, the two remained lifelong friends.
In 1968 he released three EPs: Porto Santo, Divertimento and Variações em Ré menor.