Cristina Branco – Mulheres de Abril (Locomotiva Azul, 2025)
For over thirty years, Cristina Branco has been reinterpreting fado, Portugal’s national music, for an ever-increasing international audience. With the October 24, 2025, release of her eighteenth studio album Mulheres de Abril, during the fifty-year commemoration of the popular overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship, she has reinterpreted the songs of José “Zeca” Afonso, the troubadour of the 1974 “Carnation Revolution”.
This recording is a tribute to the voices of women. Quoting the artist from her official website, “Women were symbolic and omnipresent in José Afonso’s work, shrouded in enormous loneliness and silence. Singing about them is an easy way of breaking that silence and revealing the loneliness of an entire people.” In partnership with arranger, producer and pianist Ricardo Dias, Branco has connected with the feminine in his songs and created eight intimate portraits of the women of April.
“Endechas a Bárbara Escava” announces the album’s tone with a gentle piano prelude before Branca tells the “dark-skinned” slave who served as a muse for Luís de Camões, a 16th-century Portuguese poet who inspired a Portuguese national holiday. Branco’s intimate, storytelling voice is just one of the many vocal roles she takes on. Here and throughout the record, Tomás Marques’ haunting soprano sax lines have replaced the Portuguese guitar, which usually provides fado’s chiming second voice. Branco sings “Leda mansidão/Que o siso acompanha” (Graceful meekness/accompanied by wisdom), emphasizing resilience over surrender.
“Canção do Desterro” is about the large emigration of millions of Portuguese who fled the country to escape the privation and oppression of the Salazar regime. Zeca himself was jailed for his overtly revolutionary songs that were broadcast on the radio as calls to arms. In the song’s refrain, Branco sings of Maria Bonita (perhaps styled after the 1920s-era Brazilian bandit/folk hero), “Onde vamos viver/peger/ morar/cair?” (Where are we going to live/get/reside/fall?) Branco uses the prodigious range and emotional depth of her voice to bring these stories to life and give them modern resonance. She moves the emphasis from the qualities of men (lungs and muscles) to the qualities of women (hearts and minds). In the darkness of forced migration, it is Maria who has the answers.
Like Zeca’s original, the lovely ballad, “Verdade e Mentira,” is accompanied entirely by guitars played by Bernado Mário Delgado, and contrasts gentle music with uncompromising lyrics. It describes the blurring of the dark lines between truth and lies, the temporary happiness that lies can bring, and the difficulty of speaking the truth. “Sometimes people hide, they forget” she sings ( “As vezes o povo se esconde, se esquece”).
Branca’s voice rises stridently in “Teresa Torga,” the story of a woman who dances naked in the street in a visceral challenge to established norms. The lyrics also reference António Capelo, a photographer famous for documenting the events of the revolution, just as Zeca’s songs stand as reminders of the revolutionary power of art. The powerful emotional climax of the recording, this track echoes the revolutionary slogan “Desobedecer E Preciso” (Disobedience is required).
“Verdes São os Campos” (“Green are the fields”) highlights Branco’s rich and nuanced singing, expressing the hope that the arc of time bends towards justice. She sings “Sou como o morcego vejo sem ver/Sou como o sossego sei esperar” (“I am like the bat, I see without seeing/ I am like tranquility, I know how to wait”). This song also showcases the perfectly in-tune musicians who decorate these songs. It opens with delicate piano and the subtle presence of Delgado’s guitars. During the gentle instrumental break, the solo guitar entwines with a rising Marques’ sax solo. Completing the ensemble are Alexandre Frazão (drums) and Bernardo Moreira (double bass). They have created a very modern jazz-inspired sound, while retaining the mournful saudade quality found in fado.
Cristina Branco has called this recording a political act. Singing the words of the past, she has spoken directly to our times. Zeca, the voice of his generation, who saw a dictatorship fall, has been channeled by Branco, the voice of hers, singing to a world where long-established democracies are under threat. This makes Mulheres de Abril more than a beautiful collection of songs; it is part of the obligatory disobedience.
Buy Mulheres de Abril.
Author: John Alan Urquhart
