Hip-hop on Lisbon’s South Bank – 40 years in the making
Hip-Hop Tuga, otherwise known as Portuguese Hiphop, began in the late 1980s on the south bank of the river opposite Lisbon, the area known as the Margem Sul (South Bank), including Almada and Miratejo, where Cape-Verdean culture is very strong. Filhos do Meio, provides an inside view of 40 years of history there. Graham Douglas interviews the director Luís Almeida
after of its showing at the Indielisboa Film Festival.
Hip-hop has two enduring characteristics – self-made music with few resources, and a reflection of marginalized communities, the discrimination and challenges they face. As the movements develop, they often split between the people who maintain loyalty to their roots and to social activism, and those who see commercial success coming their way.
Portuguese rap and Hip-Hop are not well known, the only thing that comes up in a search for Portuguese Hip Hop is Latinolife's own Batida Lisboa, a film about musicians in an African migrant area of Lisbon on the north bank of the Tagus in Lisbon and most of the music mentioned is based on electronic beats that evolved into a mix of Angolan Kuduro House music and techno.
A new film, Filhos do Meio, directed by Luís Almeida, explores a movement which emerged out of Lisbon's Margem Sul (South Bank) over 40 years, including Almada and Miratejo, in the early 80s, where Cape-Verdean culture is very strong. Early influential US groups included Public Enemy whose political interventionist lyrics impressed General D, born in Mozambique but who grew up in the Margem Sul. The first album to really put Portuguese Hip-Hop on the map, Rapública didn’t arrive until 1994. As the movement developed the use of English – from US Hip-Hop influence shifted to Portuguese, and to Cape-Verdean Creole. But influences have been diverse; Mind da Gap, a group of white guys from Porto, is more poetic than political, are influenced by rock, the influence of London is clear here, while Da Weasel, began in a thrash metal and funk environment.
Luís started as a video editor in television and made a small documentary series that revolved around hip-hop as well, called Sol a Sol, from sun to sun, following somebody for one day, who lived this culture. Now Luís runs a production company, when he was invited to make the documentary by Daniel Freitas, Executive Producer of the film, and the film is part of a project that included a 6-month exhibition at the Almada City Council Museum.
“My way of looking at hip-hop, as someone who never lived in Almada, but loves this culture is trying to add to it in the way that I know: making films and writing stories," Luis says. "This movie is just a little piece of a puzzle that is the culture: a little bit of a microcosm around the metropolitan area of Lisbon”.
This interview was published first in Latinolife, and can be read in full with images and sounds here:
https://www.latinolife.co.uk/articles/hip-hop-lisbons-south-bank-40-years-making