Poetry in motion: protest songwriting as strategic resource (Portugal, circa 1974)

Abstract

In this article, we use protest songs written in Portugal in the periods surrounding the Carnations Revolution to suggest that artists have the capacity to use their artistic discourses as strategic resources, attempting to shape socio‐political reality. We identify three periods in the Portuguese revolution wherein this instrumental use of art becomes patent. We further suggest that organisational managers should take into account the subjective artistic reality, especially in periods when it can affect the organisational context.

Keywords:

• capitalism
• Portugal
• protest songs
• discourse
• discursive resources

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the reviewers for their help on an earlier version of this article.

We are grateful to one of the anonymous reviewers for a comment that led us to revisit the songs. Following our method, we rechecked the songs written by the authors that appear in the selected collection to seek points of continuity and overlap. We confirmed that in terms of both content and form they are nonexistent. Nevertheless, one can detect an artistic continuity in the creative style of some of the songwriters, detectable in the music and way of singing. In fact, the author cannot dissociate her/himself totally from her/his creation. For instances, the artistic style of Sérgio Godinho or José Afonso was clearly the same during the period under analysis, as it continued to be the same after 1979 (still today, Godinho has a distinctive way of singing that leads to the immediate identification of his songs). The lyrics, however, can be chronologically organised with recourse to the descriptors obliqueness, directness, and bitterness.

Notes

1. Senhor Doutor, literally ‘Doctor Sir’, a deferential treatment of someone perceived as having special status and education.

2. Which can be translated as ‘After Saying Farewell’. It can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89LBNSX_vig

3. Which can be translated as ‘Grândola, Sunbathed Village’. It can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBK7bd3UYow

4. Former secret police agents.

5. It can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUJts90HIHc (Part 1/2) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj7LKI8rIUoandfeature=related (Part 2/2).

6. The discussion about the nature of reality and the real is beyond the scope of this paper. We use the term ‘artistic reality’ when referring to the creative oeuvre of the artist, as opposed to ‘non‐artistic reality’, which stands for all the rest. Much as Magritte’s pipe belonging to the realm of artistic as opposed to the original pipe, that served as a model and belongs to the realm of the real.