From the margin to the centre: the making of the Portuguese Popular Music canon

ABSTRACT This article reconstructs the cultural and political negotiations established within the canon of Portuguese Popular Music from the early 1970s to the early 1980s. In little more than a decade, singer-songwriters such as José Afonso, José Mário Branco and Sérgio Godinho went from marginalized figures under the dictatorship – forced to endure censorship, exile and political persecution – to central figures of the new cultural canon under democracy. The music of these artists was appropriated by many sectors of Portuguese society during the 1974–1975 Revolution and performed a true political role as the period’s soundtrack. Such political credentials were part of these musicians’ post-revolutionary legitimacy. However, as radical politics waned towards the end of the 1970s and the market gradually imposed its rules on the arts, political content, as a criterion for musical success, was replaced by aesthetic quality, cultural capital and cultural authenticity. This was how the canon of Portuguese Popular Music was consolidated around figures such as Afonso, Branco and Godinho rather than as symbols of anti-fascism, their music was increasingly celebrated as the true expression of Portuguese culture. In these circumstances, by paving the way from resistance and militancy to democracy, popular music played a decisive role in the re-imagining of post-revolutionary national identity.