Nuno Santos (aka Chullage) is a second generation Cape Verdean living in Portugal. Half of his fellow Cape Verdeans in Lisbon don’t have official documents and live without basic human rights. Nuno writes blistering protest songs about being an immigrant in Europe, and his outspokenness has made him a target for right-wing attacks.
Yet Nuno has built a flourishing career out of the slums of Lisbon, where he spends all his spare time at a community centre he founded. It provides children with computers and after school classes. There’s a small recording studio where he teaches young talent to find and hone their skills.
Music of Resistance-Finding dignity Portugal-2 March 09-Pt 1
- Music of Resistance-Finding dignity Portugal-2 March 09-Pt 2
- Also read: http://musicofresistance.wordpress.com
Teatro GRIOT | The Laughter of the Scavengers (2022)
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| @The Theatre company Teatro GRIOT |
The Laughter of the Scavengers sprang from the discovery of the remains of the Trindade War on the island of São Tomé. Directed by Zia Soares and with music by Xullaji, the show brings us the memories of those who lived through the war and those who heard tales of the event, accounts that have gradually become blurred by the passage of time.
In this war, the dead were piled up in mass graves or thrown into the depths of the sea, in an exercise of violence perpetrated by the invaders who believed that by stripping the dead of their names they would condemn them to oblivion. But these dead bodies remain as a permanent symbol of the massacre, and each year, on the February 3rd, in order to celebrate their memory, the inhabitants of São Tomé and PrÃncipe engage in a ritualistic procession, parading for several hours. It is a funeral march that amplifies the spoken words, songs, laughter and sounds emitted by the convulsive bodies.
The Laughter of the Scavengers is a continuation of this entropic, celebratory march, in which the performers manipulate times and images, remove the flesh from the bones of the bodies and laugh deliriously, reconfiguring the remains and fragments from the slaughter, based on the idea of a celebration – the festivities and the liturgy, together with the ritualistic aspects of everyday life.
- Stage direction: Zia Soares
- Group: Teatro GRIOT
Links
- The Cape Verdean diaspora in Europe
- Afropean Podcast - 5 - Lisbon: Johny arrives in Lisbon, deconstructing the myth of the ‘good coloniser’ through conversations with innovators and intellectuals of African descent in Portugal. - 'Negro' of 'Preto'? In Portuguese both mean ‘black’, but people from Angola prefer the 'Negro' and people from the Cape Verde prefer the term 'Preto'.
- The Early Atlantic Slave Trade in Portugal: A Digital Archive of Contested Legacies