This might sound like yet that same old story: Noted folkloric or jazz muso discovers drum machines, synths, and samplers, proceeds to turn into both a sweeping statement unlike anything else in their oeuvre/pisses old fans off. I can play Madlibs with my write-up for Joan Bibiloni’s For A Future Smile and substitute Lisboa-native Júlio Pereira’s name but that would miss half the picture. Miradouro is a dividing line.
Another quietly unheard of Balearic masterwork, it was Júlio’s Miradouro that found ways to suture electronic and sonic experimentation with styles driven by his instrument of choice (the cavaquinho) into newfound territories that are both “ethnic” and panoptic. More of spiritual kin to José Afonso’s Galinhas Do Mato, which would he help inspire/write, it shares its similar attempt to draw from indigenous “Portuguese” melodies/rhythms ideas that can transmute deeper, somewhere else.
Júlio Pereira began his musical career in 1974, around the time of Portugal’s Carnation Revolution. Switching from bandolim to cavaquinho (Portugal’s ukulele), Júlio first headed in two direction. It was that time’s ethos of free expression and experimentation which afforded him the ability to drop in as musician for Portuguese prog bands like Petrus Castrus or psychedelic ones like Xarhanga. Session gigs with folk and folk pop singers kept his bills paid. A chance meeting with José in the early ’80s, though, drove Júlio to explore the far-flung roots of Portuguese music in places like Africa, South America, and Asia that formed the underlying backbone of his own folkloric tradition.
In short time, Júlio would cement himself as a gifted composer who’d lend his ideas to others like Fausto, Sérgio Godinho, and Janita Salomé, growing a modernization movement began by new-school Portuguese fado singers. With time Júlio’s own music which needed to cross its own bridges finally took those steps. Steps had begun moving in Galinhas Do Mato, there Júlio began experimenting translating Lusophone rhythms into newfound synthetic instruments.
On Júlio’s Os Sete Instrumentos a deep dive into computer-based composition had afforded him the ability to experiment with electronic arrangements. Shifting away from his earlier “prog” and “jazz” leanings, this instrument found Júlio trying his hand on integrating world music influences into traditional folkloric song, too.
1987’s Miradouro would be he’s greatest, most complete work drawing from inspiration that was both ages old and (in some cases) just months old. Decamping in Lisbon, Júlio would expand the electronic side of his own personal studio to unheard of equipment. As pictured in the liner notes to Miradouro, all sorts of digital synthesizers, racks of digital effects, and computers started to fill out his realm. Although the strung instruments of the past still held a high status, on this album Júlio made way for new school instruments to capture his exploration of inner Lusophone music.
If you happen to run into the original album on some shelf most likely you get just a tiny inkling of what’s in store. Hidden beneath the cutout of his name is a graphic map of Portugal depicting the overarching important folk musical traditions of that nation within region and locale.
From Ribatejo, you see their little-known gaita-de-foles e caixa groups a martial-sounding drum and pipe tradition. From Algarve we can see a depiction of their “rancho folclórico”, a sound that reminds me of polka or tex-mex. On Portugal’s northern border with Spain we see a depiction of their gaiteros, pauliteiros, and tamborileiros, all percussive and drone musicians who play a “trasmontano” sound.
Thankfully, Portugal’s Instituto Camões has created with the help of Júlio a web-based version of that inspiring Portuguese musical map. What you’ll hear in Miradouro are song’s inspired by different regions — Litoral, Alentejo, etc. — transformed as vital forward-thinking musical ideas.
Substituting real instruments with imagined ones, allowed Júlio to explore how those folk idioms (all of distinct Portuguese creation) could translate through modern technology. Experimenting with sonics, like he did in the quite tropical-feeling “Lua De Laranja”, or striking minimal, languid tones on the opener “Miradouro” make perfect sense if one could refer to that musical map.
For every song like “Verde Andar” there is a thought behind it that’s been at play long before the music was written on tape or paper. Sampling, of all stripes, created a brilliant album weaving all these connected regions into one macro feeling that could only come from Júlio. Now whether others care to explore deeper there’s a whole album worth of songs that mark a beginning point to a new Portuguese sound.