Portuguese music to celebrate the arrival of the month of May!


Emmy Curl was born in 1990 in the northeast of Portugal. This girl grew up with a lot of interests in arts like music, painting, play, and photography. She began to produce by herself all her songs in her father's studio when she was only fifteen. To celebrate the first day of May I picked her version of Maio Maduro Maio. This song it's a cover. She made a great cover in my opinion.

The author of this song is the great Zeca Afonso. It belongs to the Cantigas Do Maio which is the fifth album by this Portuguese protest singer. This is, maybe, his best album. Some of his most famous songs are in it, one of them becoming a revolutionary anthem - it's GrĂ¢ndola Vila Morena, the song picked to be the code used by the Armed Forces Movement to start what would become the Carnation Revolution.

Zeca was an influential folk and political musician and he used his music and poetry as a tool of resistance against Oliveira Salazar's dictatorial regime. He was persecuted by the Fascist Police and saw many of his concerts canceled. He was arrested and jailed for 2 months in the political prison of Caxias. After the Carnation Revolution took place in 1974 he continued to compose political folk songs. He continues to listen all over the world and he remains an inspiration for young artists like Emmy Curl.

May 1st is a bank holiday in Portugal. It's International Workers' Day. This celebration was harshly repressed during the fascist dictatorship regime.

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