‘The world wasn’t ready for him’: José Pinhal, the Portuguese kitsch-pop icon rescued from obscurity - The Guardian

In the 1980s, he sang in some of Porto’s biggest nightclubs and released three albums of música de baile on the label Edições Nova Força to very little attention.

A combination of soft rock, synth-pop and new-wave commonly played during arraiais(local celebrations) in Portuguese towns and villages, the genre’s overtly romantic style leans into tropes of jealousy and men being let down by women.

Despite the growing acclaim for Pinhal’s work, says Motta, “it was sad to see that it was being listened to and shared in a quality far from ideal and generating royalties to individuals who had nothing to do with the artist”.

This isn’t about kitsch, but an appreciation of Pinhal’s sincerity that parallels a generation embracing aspects of Portuguese pop and folk culture previously dismissed as tacky (such as Pinheiro cabbage leaf ceramics).

Certain corners of popular music were forgotten, perhaps because in their time they were seen as not valid Pedro Mafama Released in 2021, Mafama’s debut album, Por Este Rio Abaixo, combined electronic textures with global sounds including traditional Portuguese music, while lyrically deconstructing the nationalist and lusotropicalist legacy of the repressive Estado Novo regime.

“Because of Portugal joining the European Union and the rural exodus that followed in the early 90s, a lot of the population felt a need to embrace a cosmopolitan modernisation,” she says: one in which Portuguese traditional music “just didn’t fit”.