Pop Five Music
Incorporated
one of the portuguese bands at the
festival’s 1st edition.
My oh my, we’re still
here!... And I’m 56 now. Older, hopefully wiser - though not
granted. Still can’t figure out how and where this is my world. But
I’m getting there, restlessly chasing the answers. Can’t stop at
all.
Let me tell you how I grew
up: censorship, forbidden books, movies and records, even comics
books, forbidden words, conversations and “groups” of more than
one person walking on the street or else it could be considered a
“gathering”, a riot attempt; and friends getting arrested before
my very eyes: some getting wounded, some killed, the rest of us
reaching today, free and alive, because a certain, special month of
April once happened around here.
My friends used to joke
about my luck saying I had a revolutionary angel watching over me. I
was the lucky one, indeed, and only because I was too young, just a
child in ‘their’ own words, which did not protect me from getting
expelled twice from the bus, by ‘them’, with a guy grabbing me by the
arm since I refused to get out, and also deprived from my (forbidden)
books while coercively being “sent home” with a final and
threatening warning. No news, since I had already been expelled
before from my first High School, after 4 years there. I was 14
then... Yep, it happens. Couldn’t care less - I was a child indeed.
Never mind.
Even so, all this being
said, someone, somehow always managed to get the latest news into the
country, which survived for about 1 week before censors got alerted -
by a crew of informers ‘mingling’ with the crowd everywhere -
and act on it.
Music was the messenger
and it all started when I was just a kid, at 8 (see Dylan), 10
(Hair), 12 (Marmalade), and obsessively listened to the radio, my
greatest companion in a recent solitude caused by my parents
divorce. But also had those older cousins that got me fully updated.
They used to borrow my small
Sony tape recorder (small was a huge innovation at the time, ok?)
my father had bought in Cape Verde when we were living in Africa
(Guinea-Bissau) in order to have their favorite hits recorded. So,
when returning that heck of a machine to me everything was right
there for me too and I got to know them all! Truth is I couldn’t
understand a word ‘till I was 12, but some songs just moved me so
much that they stayed with me until this very day.
Vietnam & Flower
Power: these were the 60’s and they hit us here in force during the
70’s. No wonder then that mine is a totally messed up generation:
drugs took most of my best friends and schoolmates. I was the only
one sober among them but clearly remember no one ever bothered me for
that. I did try it later, some minor stuff, for 2 weeks, just hoping
to understand my (ex)husband’s ways: it was an experience indeed
but unable to convince me it was better than my mind’s
independence, which means freedom, my most powerful drug.
Well, the thing is that
early too soon the mess began: I was 17 when Manel died, at 15, just
cause he wanted so much to fly and heroin convinced him he really
could... He was my best friend and protector since I was 14... (and
yes I’m smiling right now). Then, Luis, at 20, when I was 18. We
were starting a band, had already auditioned to a record company. All
vanished suddenly so I just gave it up right there, all accounting to
nothing but terrible memories, I simply didn’t want to go on.
Lately he had decided to create his own sound, so he had very
recently composed a song, a beautiful homage to the revolution, which
we sang at his funeral. And life went on, anyway. The last one I
heard about, Zé S., passed away at 38.
But many, many more
disappeared. When I met Manel he had 8 or 9 brothers and sisters left
from an initial total of 14 kids, for some had already died. They
came from an upper-class family, were very popular and incredible
good friends, smart, tender, generous people.
But they were all crazy
too. And all amazingly beautiful! People used to say Manel looked
like a young Jesus Christ. I knew his brother Pedro first, who was
older than us, and later moved to Amsterdam; then Tozé, the oldest
one alive, who became an icon on account of a poster someone made of
him at The Vilar de Mouros Music Festival: that was indeed a great
picture, showing him playing the flute, with his long, long beautiful
hair, sitting on the floor with his legs crossed and wearing a long,
foot-length white roman tunic, and leading everyone to believe that
it was Ian Anderson from Jethro Tull in the photo; and finally,
Antónia: our faces looked so much alike that no one at a first
approach ever knew for sure who was who. So here’s to it: these are
Manel’s brothers and sister I knew who died shortly (3, 4 years)
after him, plus one I didn’t know.
And yet all we wanted in
life was to be damn freakin’ happy! An impossible mission since we
had our own war going on in Africa and our beloved ones kept dying on
us. We were all so young, just trying hard to forget and move on. And
so we did. On and on. Loving and playing music for fun, “devouring”
resistance literature and poetry, laughing insanely with Quino’s
sweet revolutionary comics books “Mafalda” (also forbidden),
getting active in all sorts of political confrontation and
believing in a fantastic, liberating future.
Well, Yes!, we finally had
our day in April 25, ‘74. Our own, special ‘D’ Day, the dawn of
all possible Dreams. And we were in fact chasing the dream for a
while.
All gone now.
Happiness remains on hold
while ‘belief’ is still the word. But we got some deep wounds we
keep trying to heal. Yes we look like normal people, well fitted in,
some of us even went back to school and finished college while
already working, made our paths, got our good jobs, married and had
our children, earned our good money... and spent it all by the
minute. That’s who we are. But despite all that we somehow managed
to keep our better, child’s soul. Haven’t lost it in the way, not
yet.
Some great songs remain from those times, when mother hope was the key.
Some great songs remain from those times, when mother hope was the key.
Let me lend you some of
them. These are special to me ‘cause they’ve always made me cry.
And still do.
So, treat them gently for
they own a powerful history of the contemporary world.
BOB DYLAN + KEITH RICHARDS + RON WOOD – BLOWING IN THE WIND
introduced by JACK
NICHOLSON
This is my song - even sang it in a Company's Christmas dinner, a huge success! ;)
in YouTube - "SuperVoyager2011"
HAIR – LET THE SUNSHINE
IN
I absolutely love this song and this video, they're so powerful, specially at the end!
in YouTube - "suavis"
THE MARMALADE –
REFLECTIONS OF MY LIFE
This might as well be a video for the Portuguese war in Africa, only the music would be different...
in YouTube - "Sean Dolan "
Ana Vassalo
Aug 24, 2013 - 08:56
