Pop rock, new wave, and folk. The album blends synthesizers, electric guitars, and percussion with the melodic and rhythmic vocabulary of Minho folk music, delivering what one critic described as a "pop/rock/folkloric odyssey", a sound its creator himself defined as existing "between Braga and New York." The album was dedicated to Amália Rodrigues, "who always gave me and made me feel the importance of a true identity."
Release
Released in 1983 by Valentim de Carvalho, Portugal. It was António Variações's debut studio album, preceded by the 1982 double A-side single "Povo Que Lavas No Rio" / "Estou Além," which had attracted significant attention.
Production
Produced by José Carrapa, Tóli César Machado, and Vítor Rua, with José Valverde as assistant engineer. Recorded at Estúdios Valentim de Carvalho, Paço de Arcos, Portugal, between 1982 and 1983.
Reception
Anjo da Guarda was received with widespread critical and popular enthusiasm, making Variações known. Its principal songs - "O Corpo É Que Paga," "Estou Além," "Anjinho da Guarda," and "É p'rá Amanhã" - became enduring staples of the Portuguese popular canon.
António Variações
António Joaquim Rodrigues Ribeiro (December 3, 1944, Fiscal, Amares, Braga – June 13, 1984, Lisbon) was a Portuguese singer-songwriter who worked as a hairdresser for most of his adult life - in London, Amsterdam, and Lisbon - before launching a recording career at the age of thirty-seven. Born the fifth of ten children into a rural working-class family in the Minho, he developed his musical sensibility through local folklore before emigrating to work abroad. His stage name, "Variações" -Variations - reflected his eclectic artistic vision. In 1982 his controversial cover of Amália Rodrigues's "Povo Que Lavas No Rio" propelled him to national attention. In the fourteen months between his debut album and his death, he became one of the most distinctive and beloved artists of the Portuguese rock generation of the 1980s. He died on 13 June 1984 - the feast day of Saint Anthony, patron saint of Lisbon at the age of thirty-nine; he is widely considered to have been among the first public victims of AIDS in Portugal.
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