Genre
Portuguese folk and protest song. The album marks a decisive turning point in Afonso's output: the poetic language becomes more complex and the political urgency more acute - leaving behind the folk balladry of the 1960s for a denser, more mature idiom that would define his work through the following decade.
Release
Released in 1970 by Orfeu, the Oporto label founded by Arnaldo Trindade that published all the most relevant part of José Afonso's discography. It was his fourth studio album.
Production
Recorded at the Pye Studios, London, England, in sessions that featured Carlos Correia (Bóris), on first viola, and Luís Filipe Colaço, on second viola. During the London sessions, José Afonso and his collaborators encountered Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso, then exiled, who attended some of the recording sessions. The album was recorded without Rui Pato, Afonso's habitual guitar accompanist on previous records.
Reception
Widely regarded as a watershed in José Afonso's career and in modern Portuguese music, the album has been described by critics as marking the official birth of the mature Afonso — the artist who would go on to write "Grândola, Vila Morena" (1971), which became the signal song of the Revolution of April 25, 1974.
José Afonso
José Manuel Cerqueira Afonso dos Santos (August 2, 1929, Aveiro – February 23, 1987, Setúbal), known as Zeca Afonso, was a Portuguese singer-songwriter, guitarist, and poet widely regarded as the greatest figure in the history of Portuguese popular music and one of the most significant political songwriters of the twentieth century. He studied at the University of Coimbra - where he developed his early musical voice within the Coimbra fado tradition - and became a central figure of the Nova Canção movement during the 1960s. His song "Grândola, Vila Morena" (1971) was chosen as the signal broadcast on national radio that initiated the Revolution of April 25, 1974. He was awarded the Prémio Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen in 1982.
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