Dom Pedro

In your full adolescence you wrote a letter to your father, who was in Angola, evoking 25 reasons to let you get out of the Military College. Do you remember of some of this reasons?

No. The letter was lost in a package returning from Africa. Certainly one of the reasons was about the fact that I already learned the necessary from the military institution and another one about the incompatibility between the military college and the study of music.

What can we learn from a military collegue that we hold for the entire life?

The loyalty. Ethic values. The feeling of comradeship is highly considered among the former students of the College. My life didn't allow me to stay a lot with my former comrades; for this reason I don't know what they all learned, in general.

Are you the only son?

There are me and two more daughters in the first family of my father. After that, my father married a second time and I have two more brothers. The festivities are divided between the house of my mother and my father. My parents divorced when I was 6 or 7 years old.

How much the family is important for you? In the hurry of the concerts and of the travels, your life probably suffers from that.

My life is really distant from this habits. I don't know what to say about the family because I'm not a father and I'm not married.

Because of a choice? Did you want to have sons?

I will have. I will have when I will find their mother. I think that I have an extraordinary life, an extraordinary opportunity. I am very dedicated to my activities which is obsessive. And I think that I have a reasponsibility with many people who depend on my work and on the dedication on the things I started. For this reason I do not live with the sadness of not having a family or because I am not married. Since a long time I say that I will marry when I will be 43.

You are almost there

Just three years (laugh)

How did this objective of 43 years appeared?

It is a story with a corean. I said that here in Portugal we marry when we find a woman we like and when we have an home. He said that the man who marries before 43 seemed to him an adventurer. I talked a lot with him and at the end I agreed with him... (pause)... but we have to talk about this matters? Please let me talk about something else.

You already gave hundreds of interviews, you already answered to thousands of questions. I preferred to let you talk about what you want.

My personal life is just a life as yours, of a relative interest. What is not common in the life of everybody is this fact of writing songs. And I always say that I am in the waiting of someone to ask me what I want to say with that song or with another one.

By chance we talked about your personal life. I think that the personal life is not separable from the professional one. Because there is a concept under all the things that you do, since the Herois do Mar to Madredeus.

What is that concept?

I thought about a word to describe you: conceptualist. You gave the writings of Padre Antonio Vieira to the other members of the group. You put rituals on the stage as there was a divorce between the stage and the audience (as when you exibit the Cross on the stage). I want to say that is not possible to make a distincion between your work and what is behind it.

What is not separable is the layer of the ideas with my activity. The things that I wanted to do became a work. I live with a certain dignity by writing songs, recording albums, showing my own music. I already forgot what was the question.

If you see yourself as a conceptualist

If we think that I have had certain ideas that I obtained to transform in much more communicable concepts, yes.

When you was 20 you said that you wanted to enstablish a communication between the nihilism which affected the generations of 70-80 and the will to do things.

In that period, the choice of being a musician was also a way to show a disbelief in the world, in reality. Between the 1979 and the 1989 to say "I don't want to be judge nor an advocate, I want to devote myself to build an activityaround music", was a way to avoid all the values of my time. We didn't hear about people building libraries or discoteques, nobody escaping the main path; the people did the professions that their parents did before them.

Was it the building of the Uniao Lisboa?

This was later. There is obviously a certain detachment from reality, because I didn't obtain to live with that values.

Anyway you studied Psicology to the fourth year.

I wanted to know what was known about the people and about the groups of people. That was in the end. I never thought about becoming a professional. I always saw the university as a completion of my first activity which was, without any doubts, to attain a good way to make music.

At those times, your references were Zeca Afonso, Sérgio Godinho?

I also admired José Mario Branco, Amália Rodrigues and Carlos Paredes. I liked a lot this five musicians. I was 15. I had this interest in the fact that music could be done in portuguese. There was the convinction that the portuguese language sounded bad, and I found in these musicians an exam,ple of the proof that this was not true.

Do you listen to music just for the pleasure of listening or do you always analyze it, in the music, in the arrangements, in the way to use the voice?

This is for me a pleasure. The musicians do not listen to music with the same ears of normal people. My pleasure is to understand how the things have been done: what are the sounds, what are the instruments, how much time the song plays, how it has been built; this is my relation with music.

Apart from that analysis, can you still be moved by music?

I am moved a lot by my own music, because it is the music which I live the most. I do not listen to music a lot and I have not many opportunities to see many concerts.

For a musician is almost a paradox.

There is nothing paradoxal because in this period I travel almost every day. And the fact is that there is a lot of music. Much more than the music which is edited and distributed in Portugal. In places like Germany or Japan 1000 albums are published every month, with many interesting experiences made in every part of the world. And even if I listen to a few music I do listen to much more music than the majority of people. Can I be moved? Look, I was moved by the age of a musician who played xylophone in Mexico.

Can we try to understand why did you want to become a musician? You had 12 years when you received your first guitar. How happened that you get so passionate for music?

I thought that music was an extraordinary way of expression of my tim. I thought that I liked a lot to play. I thought that it would have allowed me to have a much solitary life than other jobs. On the other hand I didn't like the other jobs, I didn't like the school and the university because I found them without any creativity. I studied until I was 24, (I studied for 20 years), and my dissatisfaction in relation to my studies was great. I didn't want to mortgage my life with something that didn't involve me.

Do you live intensely your days as they are the last ones? Are you more calm or do you continue to be impetuous?

I have always been calm

Look that you have the reputation of being ferocious

What? Where? (laugh) It is a great injustice to say that.

But what is the image that you have of yourself?

I do not think a lot about that. I try to be correct with everybody and ready. The people behave in different ways because they live different relations. My ability in personal relations have been to devote myself to one thing, as I'm doing, and since I was really young I obtained a great independency. A independent person is really different from one who is dependent by the will of pleasing everybody, of promising. These are the things that I don't want to do, do you understand?

Yes. But I think that you are perfectly aware of your intelligence, of your talent.

I was lucky. I have had great comrades. It is clear that I have a certain trust in myself, but the things do not depends just on myself.. For example, the groups I built: they were with much older people, who taught me and obliged me to express my ideas with the necessary rigour. Paulo Gonçalves, guitarist of the Faiscas, of the Corpo Diplomatico and of the Herois do Mar; o Toze Almeida, drummer of the Heroido Mar, o Carlos Maria Trindade, o Antonio Pinheiro da Silva who taught me a lot in the studio. It was a much peculiar group, with a unversal vision.; we loved poetry, history and we discussed about the future of the world which was a common preocupation. Every time we were discussing about the future of Portugal, of the american influence. All these things were future at those times and today it is present. We knew that we were living in a period of great changings. We made cultural meetings together with Pedro Bidarra, Edgar Pera and Miguel Esteves Cardoso.

Meetings at the café?

We were in 1979. There were no café. One of our social complaints in Lisbon was the fact that there were no places to meet. During the Eighties we did some kind of activities...

There is in you a very strong "portugality", exemplified in the music that you hear when you was young; at 15 years you listened to fado.

Before, before. I listened to it since I was six. Ad I was always asking for more albums.

You exhibit a strong "portugality" and at the same time a great opening to the things from outside, in particular from Britain, which brought you to the period of punk ad derivatives, with the Faiscas and the Corpo Diplomatico.

"Portugality" is today a very vague word.

In your case is love for the Country

It is. It is the idea, not original, that an artist have to try to compose for his own country, to try to merge with the elements of his own culture. It is a question of being, this work, useful and familiar to the people who are the public.
When we made a punk group like the Faiscas, we had two kind of repertoires: one was written by us and the other one was composed by rock and roll songs from the Fifties. By doing that we realized that the english language was easy to put into rock and roll while the portuguese language in the lyrics needed a complicated poem. We wanted to be famous in our own country because of our dedication to our own culture and not because of being able to imitate the culture of somebody else. At those times this thought was quite difficult because the internationalism was quite popular.

There was also a certain self-pity in relation of the fact of being portuguese.

There was a thraumatic repulsion of the portuguese memory, as if the country just passed a war like the japanese or the germans. And a great propaganda on the dictature was made; the dictature was infact a great instrument of propaganda which built the source of its own ruin, by forbidding people to think other than white or black. In those years we lived a great doubt: it is worth to built a portuguese Portugal or it is better to associate Portugal to the society of nations (which nobody knew what really was). For us it was clear that we didn't want to make concerts, posters and tickets just in order to be able to sing a song in english and to drink a beer...

After 20 years, do you feel any nostalgia of this period?

I have no kind of nostalgia of my own life. Everything was difficult but obtained. All of the ideas that I had when I was young are now put in practice. It is an extraordinary thing to say but it is true. The idea that I had to make music, to create to circumstance so that a portuguese music could exist, to be able to be a poet in the popular music, to make this music universal and interesting to other nations just because it is portuguese and to cultivate a certain identity. This is the path I have followed and that I will continue to follow.

Madredeus is the most long-lasting project. Is it the project you searched for.

These projects are not personal projects. They are personal in the limit of the people envolved in them. In truth, the projects were not short; they had their ideal life and they ended in the moment in which we thought it would have been correct and because we wanted to evolve in other circumstances.

The Herois do Mar were really famous at their times.

Yes, but we made five albums and many maxi-singles but just the first album is known. The impact of the first albums determined the following 6 years. It started in '81 and in '88 I still had to listen about the "Brava Dança dos Herois" and if we were fascists or not. From an artistical point of view we already made different albums, which started different projects. I still listen at the radio the announcements made with "O Pastor" and "A Vaca de Fogo" of my current tournee. What I have to say? Since then we made 90 songs and we went round the world for three times!!!

Are you disappointed by the accusations of being a fascist?

A lot. It was a movement enstablished by the Left to associate us to the idea of an advancing Right, and the conscience of that decreased our sadness. At the beginning we thought that we would have been misunderstanded. But we also thought that it was a cultural question. It was really thraumatizing for us.

Do you place yourself at the Left?

As an artist I do not want to take the position of a party

I am not asking you to take the position of a party

I don't place myself in the Left. I have the social values of the Left much more rooted then the majority of the Left and I have the patriotic values of the Right much more rooted than the lajority of the Right.. I have a public life which is expressive, this is true, of the ideals of portugality. I try not to miss the elections and my vote has always been, if you want to know, in the purpouse of the maximum alternation of power. I normally vote against the people currently in the government. We never had an honest and organized State and at the end of the four year we can always see the traces of the people who installated and used their power.

The democratic alternation is correctly the most serious flag of the people making opposition.

There is no need of a so ferocious debate. A portugues who want to follow the Right or the Left do not know what leader to follow; this is because none of the leaders have made a theoric work. But most of all, I am an artist and my work explain well my ideas. It is a way to transcend this minor discussion between the Right and the Left. I do not come to Sines to play for a communist autharchy. I come to make a music concert. I try to build, to document, to strengthen the idea of a nation and of a national culture; afterwards, this culture has to learn to show itself in the Right or in the Left.

In your adolescence the debate between the Left and the Right had another meaning. At this moment, the preoccupation for the social is essential and it is shared between the two sides.

You are right, when I was young it still was a theoric debate. But, as an idealist and as a portuguese, I think that it is necessary to overcome the conception of making politics as it is today, because I don't think that this way of making politics encourage people to have preoccupation in relation to their life. And this is the most important thing. We talk about gaining influence in Europe, but the people can gain influence in the way the build their identity, in the choice of their way of living.

Because you have been abroad, you will have a clearer idea of what is this way of living.

It is a way which avoid the life in community. We are not teaching people to pay the price of living in community. Values like the ones of associativism, of the reflection, of the humanitarian associations, are seen as an accessory but are the foundation of the society. It is a kind of mixture of Left and Right and we all agree that it would be an ideal propaganda for an ideal government. This stimulation to associativism, to the conscience that small groups of people has to solve the problems of the place in which they live without asking for permission, is, for me, fundamental.

To decentralize...

It is not to decentralize, it is to make thigs easier, to organize. And after this authonomy, and there is the actual paradox of the situation, ther could not be an authonomy of leadership but an authonomy made of partecipation...

How the things are going out there?

Since the Spain they do not build quarters without gardens, factories without refectories. These are things instituted by common sense which is really important.

People do not follow the public life. But we should ask if the things we are proposing them is enough attractive.

To change the status quo is an enormous thing. When I was young I was really interested in the civic meaning of my life.This was the things to which I wanted to dedicate my life. Then I realized that the best way to partecipate to the social life of my country was to build a music which can be sung in our own language. I think that the things I obtained thanks to this project called Madredeus have been really useful to my country: the visitors which come to our country attracted by the fantasies of our own music and of our own country. This gives me a great joy. And I feel that this is useful to my social partecipation. My political choice in Portugal is this one: a group of musicians which had to make a propaganda of something portuguese and not of Portugal. In this meaning, Madredeus is a political project.

I read about the episode of the fire of your home which was reduced to ruins. Just one thing survived: a portuguese flag above an album of memories.

Just the flag and the book of memories of the Herois do Mar. Everything burned. I still have this flag and it is still in my home.

What are the objects that you never throw in the trash can?

I don't keep many things. I keep the albums and the books and I also have a lot of recordings of programmes, memories, gold albums, photos of this travels which I started 20 years ago.

I have heard that you have bought a magnificent home in Evora, that you are rich.

I am not rich. It was not so expensive!!! (laugh). I have a great garden.

How did you decided to go to Evora and to abandon Lisboa.

I do not live in Evora; it is a place in which I can rest, my home. I make 100 concerts every year and for this reason I do not stay at home. The things I bring with me?, this is what you want to know? A dat, a personal computer, a guitar, clothes for 20 days or so.

Who manage this part of your life?

Just me. And I'm helped by my mother, my sisters, my loved one.

Are you tired of the life you have started?

The most important thing to dominate is the fatigue. Many times we are filled with sorrow or saudade and this is the most tiring thing. If you asked if I'm tired about the activity of the group, I am not near nor far; in the contrary, I think that the great days of Madredeus still have to come. Personally I'm sometimes tired of airplanes, of travels, of meals in strange hours, of the fuses. At my age, the idea of being an example appears often. I think that the evidence of the work of this group is the first message.

Why do you feel the need of being exemplar?

Because a group is public and we sell tickets and people buys our albums; it generates richness, generates expenses and what is being done has to be done in an exemplar way. In the same in which a soccer player has to be exemplar when he plays in the league. A champion has to be exemplar. When you are 20 and you make a group you are communicating with your generation.; when you are 40, you are communicating with all of the generations. And I think that the way in which we are doing it is exemplar. If tomorrow a boy feel that he wants to be a musician and search for a light on how to proceed in this career, I hope that he will look at our own history, because it illustrates what can be done with dignity and creativity.

At the first recordings of the group there were a lot of friends....

The matter was the truth of music, it was about the consciousness that the bizarre shape of our music could communicate with the people we considered. This open period was exetremely important; the people there were not a mass of critics but a mass of exigent and loyal people. What the acordion was doing there, on how Teresa was singing that song. Now it would not be possible. The level of musical discipline do not allow discussions.

And now?

The music is written. I compose my songs alone; in my home more often. The songs matures in myself and this works endures many months. I always do that, some of them are finished while someothers no. I have always much more songs than the ones I go to edit.

The Madredeus are a big enterprise. You are the one who direct the various elements, inside and outside of the stage?

One of the keys of the group is its efficiency and his little number of people. We are ten people travelling. Five people on the stage and five people outside. Then we have a greater equipe with the editors in all the parts of the world and with the equipes of production, a national one and another one for every country we visit. My way of being is really determined by the passion for the action, for the will of making things.

Do you require the maximum abnegation from the people together with you?

You cannot require

This dispersion among different projects...

I don't have many!!!

You founded the Resistencia and the Delfins when already existed the Madredeus and the Herois do Mar

They are not multiple sides. Second, third, fourth, fifth! It can be solved well! It is all the same thing. It is just a question of organizing the agenda.

This is to say that even in this dispersion you concentrate immensely in the projects you founded. But since a determined phase all these concentration falled on Madredeus. Was it because of the natural development of your career or because you decided that the project Madredeus deserved your complete attention?

In my case, it always deserved. At the time of the Resistencia, it was much more a literary project then developed in something different. To tell the way in which this happened to Madredeus; I thought that it was an historical moment of the group and that the international presentation of the group could not be considered superficially. It was extremely important to decide if the group had to be professional and if he could have the availability of everybody or if he had to remain a not professional one. It is an enormous difference. It was a decision of these years, 91, 92.

You and Teresa are the pillars of the group

And the responsibles also.

Does exist a defined jerarchy?

It exists, exists. But the ideas I launched, the loyalty, the enthusiasm I created, the sustain I obtained oblige me to have this dedication. I do not know more than that! This is the adventure of my profession, you can never know.

Do you feel a great pleasure in making concerts?

Yes. What I like the most is to compose, but my daily joy is to make concerts. This (holding in the hands the baggages) is my normal: the guitar, the desk, the dinner...

Interview by Anabela Mota Ribeiro
from the magazine "Diario de Noticias"

approximate translation by Corvinus

Index
Madredeus - O Porto