Vitorino: “The song, today, is less efficient” – Interviews

“It’s horrible”, says Vitorino Salomé, ending with a laugh. He speaks half seriously, half jokingly. When we catch him on the phone, “on the go”, he is on a tour of daily concerts, which is not easy for someone who “cultivates leisure”, as he likes to say. But he soon notes: “There is a pleasurable side to music, which is not a production chain, it is a superior entity that hovers in our heads, it motivates everything, it gives happiness to the world.”

Born 81 years ago, an unavoidable name in Portuguese music of recent decades, Vitorino has a new album. The newly released album is called I don’t know what this is about, but I don’t agree! In an interview, he talks about the songs, the country and the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April.

Going back to the origins of this album, its beginning: what triggered this album? Was there any song in particular that gave you clues to what could become a new album – which has now arrived?
It was the song that gave the title [primeira faixa do disco, e homónima]. It was a fantastic motto. The expression is a direct translation, a sentence of the times we are living in. However, that sentence – “I don’t know what this is about, but I don’t agree!” – was given at a recreation center in Redondo [vila do distrito de Évora, onde nasceu]. It was a relative of mine who said it, in the 1960s, at a General Assembly of the Redondense Futebol Clube. I never forgot her again.

It’s a very interesting theme for making an album – or a novel. Because there are phrases that remain eternal. Humanity doesn’t change much and history always repeats itself. It repeats itself in another way, it is never the same, but it repeats itself.

With you, how does a song come about? How does the creation and writing of a song tend to happen? Is there a base instrument? Does it start with the text, with the melody?
I’m lucky to have had a piano within my reach since I was a boy. My father bought a piano because his children all liked music. I got used to playing the piano. I taught myself, I play very badly. I went to a convent to learn to play the piano with a nun, who I remember was very pretty, but then I asked my father to leave because he preferred to play. He stayed playing until very late in a very beautiful square on the ground floor, where children played before they had cell phones, in the Portuguese countryside. This piano teaches me songs.

Well, the piano has all the notes in the world. It is the most interesting instrument that man has invented. Give us the notes if we put our fingers in the right place. I learned to put them where I wanted them and I started to build melodies. Or the opposite, I write the text and make the melody over it by reading the texts. When I ask friends for lyrics, I read the lyrics out loud and they immediately bring music. It immediately brings a rhythm, a syllable. That’s where it all starts. The creative process is quite inexplicable, we don’t know why we make these melodies. We’ve heard them, maybe, because we listen to a lot of music. And I grew up in places where a lot of music was heard – at my house, with my uncles… With António Lobo Antunes, I discussed the creative process a lot and we never reached conclusions. I think an angel descends into him. Maybe a little devil will descend on me.

In this song, there is a duet with Cuca Roseta, on the theme For when I find you. What motivated this specific artistic meeting?
One of the reasons is that she sings very well. It’s all eka music. She immediately improvised a third, an “altinho”, as we say in Alentejo-wonderful, without direction, without anything. We went to Rui Veloso’s studio, came out and boom, very sudden. She is a good friend and is a woman with causes. And attentive to society.

He said in a recent interview: “Laziness for me is a hobby.” If the jokesters read this, they’re screwed, here comes another one about the Alentejo people…
We cultivate leisure. It’s a cultural thing, taking it slow. If you ask someone from Alentejo where a street is, within a town, if you’re in the countryside, you stop and say where a certain village is, they stop for a while… It happened to me many times, I started laughing: look to see where the sun is, “let me see where I am”. And then: “Do you see beyond that? That roundabout? It’s not that one. You see that road that goes up there? It’s not that one, it’s the other one.” Start with no.

Someone who likes to do things in time, and who says that laziness is a problem for them hobby, how do you deal with the schedule you have these days? He’s been giving concerts every day, if I saw correctly…
It’s horrible. [risos] There is a pleasure side, of course, because music is not a production chain. Music is something else, it is a superior entity, it hangs over our heads, it motivates everything and gives happiness to the world. If there was more music, we would live better. However, the song is already subverted with the showbiz. Then, music loses its natural origins and is already on the verge of artificial intelligence and not needing men to practice it, which is impossible.

Vitorino is a name inseparable from the April songbook, and from the intervention songbook. We are celebrating 50 years since the 25th of April, so it is inevitable that we will go through these times. At that time, was the belief in the transformative power of a song very different from what it seems to be today?
Especially in efficiency. The song is less effective now because there is a lot of noise. Wherever we go today, there is music: supermarket, elevator, restaurants, on the bus, everywhere there is music. Fortunately, there isn’t one on trains, only those who want it can have it. Noise takes away from the music’s effectiveness. And much of the music is also very automatic, made by computer. That vulgarizes it a lot. Music was not used as much as a means of making people buy things faster. The music that you hear in many stores, for example, there must be people who buy quickly and leave to escape it. [ri-se].

But the song was very effective. I’m remembering the revolutionary songbooks. Many hymns were made from the songbook of the revolutions, especially in southern Europe. Revolutions have always had a lot of wine – the 25th of April had it, I attended that one – and they always have a songbook, a soundtrack. In Portugal we were lucky to have a fantastic soundtrack that still lasts. And there are a lot of kids out there doing good things.

Isn’t it curious, or paradoxical, that it has never been so easy to make songs and record songs – there are those who record them alone at home, without needing a lot of investment, material or publishers – and at the same time you don’t easily find many voices in music. , with political, interventionist positions?
But this has to do with the times we live in. Capitalism is becoming wild and unbridled, everything has to make a profit. Upon entering the showbiz, music already has to be profitable, profitable music is required and not spontaneous, wild music. Music is the same as wine: wine is something that is fashionable, they have discovered it now… There are sommeliers who go to school and make all wines the same. The music is very low level. Also because, in addition to each song not being very profitable, it is not very durable and is thrown out for another to come. We are still from the generation of music that was subversive. Now it is subverted by showbiz.

Having followed, and in many cases collaborated, with names from several generations of Portuguese music, how do you look at what is today the panorama of music made in Portugal?
What is publicized, what is shown on the radio, especially what is shown on television, the competitions… Now there is an obsession with competing in everything, and the competitions do not help the composition, the inspiration of the kids, they are against the current.

Does it seem likely to you that the fears that exist today about democracy, and about the preservation of rights and freedoms, could give rise to an artistic response and the recovery of the intervention song?
I’ve always practiced this more interventionist approach. I think it’s very likely. Carolina Deslandes is already doing interesting things, and others. As I told you a little while ago, history repeats itself but always in a different way, because everything depends on what they feel now, on their social involvement, which is different from mine. But I think so, I think there will be an intervention response on the stage and in all the arts.

Populist pressure, like what happened in the 1920s in Italy, Germany, France, this pressure is very strong now. And it’s coming from France, Italy, the same [países]. Now the generations are much more educated about what happened, they know how to read much more and the media makes everything much faster. There are elements that will work in our favor, for good or for bad, and the contestation will be repeated in another way. I hope so, and that it proves to be more efficient.