BLITZ 40 years: “There is no history of music in Portugal in the last 40 years that can be done without BLITZ”, Pedro da Silva Martins
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.
Pedro da Silva Martins, from Cara de Espelho, remembers “browsing through BLITZ in Dona Lurdes’ stationery store, on my street in Damaia”. “Some classmates at school mentioned the newspaper and I was already curious. I convinced my parents to buy the newspaper and, from then on, I became a regular reader of BLITZ”, he says. “It was still in newspaper format, which was no use for a 9-year-old to read. I clearly remember sitting on the terrace of my parents’ restaurant with my brother and my friends, all leaning over the table reading and commenting on the news and exchanges of messages”.
For the musician, BLITZ was “very important at an early stage in Deolinda’s career.” “It helped publicize our work, which until then was unknown,” he says. “We always felt the care and attention on the part of BLITZ in monitoring of our work, both with the band and personally. This help is still vital today, when it comes to, for example, Cara de Espelho. music) would be much more difficult.”
His music lover side was also “deeply marked” by BLITZ. “I met many artists and bands that would otherwise have been impossible to have met. The possibility of entering their world and their heads, through interviews or BLITZ reports, taught me not only how to develop myself as a person, citizen and musician, but also, I learned a lot about listening to music by reading BLITZ”. “There is no history of music in Portugal in the last 40 years without BLITZ”, he adds. “In music and beyond: whoever, 300 years from now, wants to create an in-depth portrait of music, culture, society, the country and even the world, in these 40 years, will have in BLITZ a bibliographical wealth of incalculable value”.
For the future, Pedro da Silva Martins leaves a simple request: “May you continue to give us music for many good years”.
