BLITZ 40 years: “BLITZ’s greatest contribution is the recording of Portuguese musical memory”, Luís de Freitas Branco
As we enter the countdown to the big party for BLITZ’s 40th anniversary, at Meo Arena, in Lisbon, on December 12th – with concerts by Xutos & Pontapés, Capitão Fausto, Gisela João and MARO –we asked musicians, promoters, journalists, radio hosts and other personalities to go to the trunk to retrieve memories from four decades of history, also leaving us a message for the future.
“I was born in 1988, four years after the first edition of BLITZ”, Luís de Freitas Branco, music critic and author of “The Revolution Before the Revolution”. “My father, Pedro de Freitas Branco, is an obsessive music lover, and in the 90s, in addition to being a professional musician, he was also a journalist and occasional music critic. To this day, he can’t even scramble an egg – a musician, therefore – and our meals were always in a pastry shop, at undefined times – today we would say brunch”, he reports.
“Our company were two newspapers that my father bought religiously, for different, equally sick reasons: ‘A Bola’ and BLITZ. This is my earliest memory of BLITZ: holding those huge pages, among crumbs of cakes and savory snacks, that contained indecipherable secrets. What fascinating people these were, like superheroes of the song.”
It was only at the age of 18 that Luís de Freitas Branco bought BLITZ for the first time. “Soon the magazine’s debut edition, with the Rolling Stones on the cover”, he notes. “At the time, I remember my father and friends cursing the format, the sacrilege, the death of music journalism, while for me it was the exact opposite: finally, a music magazine in Portugal, in the wake of ‘Mojo’, ‘Uncut’ or ‘Q’, the British magazines that formed my melomania. The magazine arrived at a curious time: in the same year, the debut album by Arctic Monkeys was released, possibly the last media frenzy of pop rock, when it was still happening. they lined up at a record store on the day of release; and BLITZ followed this kind of transatlantic movement, from the Strokes, White Stripes, Franz Ferdinand, to Pontos Negros. BLITZ magazine is associated with this memory, the celebration of a handful of artists. guitar pop bands that I could finally call my own. And later, in 2010, an event that, naturally, no one noticed: I made my debut at BLITZ as a music critic.”
For the critic, “o BLITZ’s greatest contribution is the recording of Portuguese musical memory. BLITZ managed to feed a culture of nostalgia for popular music, as Anglo-Saxon magazines and newspapers do, and also present and celebrate Portuguese music projects. These two points are crucial: the press is inseparable from the music industry, it is the means that memorizes our musical history, and without the chroniclers, there is no memory, there is nothing. BLITZ celebrated Portuguese music and determined its canon, especially when it chose the best albums of Portuguese music ever, in 2004, and then, divided by decades, in 2009. The canon is another fundamental pillar for musical culture, he defines an identity, which will be referenced by future projects, whether by imitation or rejection. At the moment, I am studying for a master’s degree in Musical Sciences and I use BLITZ as references for a period, as relevant as any other historical document”.
Luís de Freitas Branco’s desire for the future of BLITZ is “something simultaneously elementary and challenging: longevity. While newspapers and magazines, concert spaces and studios close, BLITZ remains, 40 years later”. “It is longevity that distinguishes BLITZ”, he finishes.
