André Príncipe — "Untitled, Kaunas, Lithuania, 2018".

Angered Land

05/08/2020

I am a son of the land

Born in the cradle of space

I was a slave to the money god

I was everything, while being nothing

A blend of seaweed

And the gold of the pioneer

I was the king’s fool

And ate under the table

Breadcrumbs stepped on

Without rights, I reclaimed

The natural-born rights

Of those born with ill fate

Everything I did was to forget

I nurtured myself with pain

In the vines of despair

But revolt gave life

In my aching chest

To an anthem of “I can and I want”

My fado is no ballad

Nor am I afraid to raise

Its curled flag

I was a boy, now a soldier

And no one can vanquish

A son of the angered land

Lyrics by Paco Gonzalez and Franklim Godinho.

A fado song made popular by Fernando Maurício.

The title of the programme Angered Land comes from a fado song ("Terra Irada", in Portuguese). The underlying thread within this programme, curated by Pedro Gomes, has to do with grassroots, communitarian expressions of music from all around the world, particularly highlighting local manifestations and the worldwide plethora of intercultural links which Portugal has developed, in several and mostly convoluted ways, throughout the centuries. All the while, it also deals with crucial tangents of other segments of the post-colonialist fight, as examples of functional, emancipatory visions and structures of cultural and, to a degree, socio-economic independence.