ABSTRACT
One of the greatest symbols of the Portuguese Carnation Revolution, along with the carnation itself (placed in rifle muzzles and on uniforms of soldiers during the relatively peaceful coup), is a song. ‘Grândola, Vila Morena’ (Grândola, Swarthy Town), by José Afonso, was used as the signal for the troops to advance on 25 April 1974, and not only to topple the 48-year-old authoritarian regime of the Estado novo (new State), a late survivor of the wave of fascisms in the period between the two great wars in Europe; this political development also brought to an end the three-front colonial war the Portuguese had been fighting in Africa since the early 1960s. The song did not just trigger the Revolution symbolically. Right after the coup, ‘Grândola’ became ubiquitous as part of the ‘soundtrack’ to the revolutionary process that lasted until the end of 1975, when a counterrevolution paved the way for parliamentary democracy. This process was marked by the left-wing radicalization of the army and the emergence of a vast grassroots movement challenging private property and capitalism (Ramos Pinto, 2013). And yet, Afonso’s song’s historical role was more substantial than that of simple accompaniment: the choice to broadcast a banned song suggests that, in spite of censorship, ‘Grândola’ was recognizable as part of the subversive political culture that had led to the Revolution in the first place. The song was thus ‘acting’ historically even before 1974, in the context of an intense renewal of Portuguese music and politics that had been under way since the early 1960s.
