Between the countryside and the city, between two centuries, the
result was a Portuguese sound that tells a country in transition. They
called it TascaBeat. CD "Tasca Beat"t is a sound that celebrates a vibrating
Portugal in an intimate place where party and melancholy meet each
other. A sound that winks to the fado and listens to a forgotten
country, that sings with proletarian glamour the streets of Lisbon and
the suburban neighborhoods. The music of a harbor where several
languages fulfilled with the dream of departing to later return are
heard, where we toast to a reinvented Portuguese heart. OqueStrada
play the sound of the suburbs singing the old and new city. It is the
old postcard worn and rebuilt by the times, it is the raw, popular and
even danceable celebration of fado, as it is also Africa’s kuduro or
funaná, or Brazil, or hip hop, or every other culture that landed
swiftly in this welcoming country.
OqueStrada is born from the desire of Miranda and Pablo – both coming from the world of entertainment, she as a theatre actress with experience on the hidden fado houses and Cape Verdean taverns, where she began to sing, he coming from France with a suitcase full of experience in urban intervention and show design – to create a portable musical project with the shape of a small neighbourhood orchestra ready to travel, where the personality and uniqueness of each one is the key point.
They invited João Lima along with his Portuguese guitar, Zeto Feijão along with his classical guitar to join the voice and the “contrabacia”. As the orchestra always kept the door open to other road lovers, Marina Henriques, accordionists, and Sandro Manuel, trumpetist, would join in later.
OqueStrada set its base at an old cinema in the city of Almada, a lookout for Lisbon on the other side of river Tagus. In this suburban reality, they tackled the destiny and hit the road, building, year after year, their own circuit. They left in search of a country and went on building a cult. From village to village, from town to town, they took by storm the capital city where they sold out venues while singing about a hidden and migrant Lisbon, about the suburbs as charmed places. Copies of home demos were circulating the country, making them a well-kept secret for many. Their simple music grew on this adventure between small village fairs, “tascas”, festivals and city venues.
In OqueStrada an adventurous and independent song was created out of few resources, assuming the acoustic sampling, the DIY and a well orchestrated musical vagrancy. Some of the instruments, like the contrabacia, the percussion chair and the tiny Yamaha keyboards came in and were saved from a sad end in the junkyard. They are now key parts to the compositions. To do the world with what one finds in the way is something the OqueStrada appreciates.
Between the countryside and the city, between two centuries, the result was a Portuguese sound that tells a country in transition. They called it TascaBeat. TascaBeat is a sound that celebrates a vibrating Portugal in an intimate place where party and melancholy meet each other. A sound that winks to the fado and listens to a forgotten country, that sings with proletarian glamour the streets of Lisbon and the suburban neighborhoods. The music of a harbor where several languages fulfilled with the dream of departing to later return are heard, where we toast to a reinvented Portuguese heart. OqueStrada play the sound of the suburbs singing the old and new city. It is the old postcard worn and rebuilt by the times, it is the raw, popular and even danceable celebration of fado, as it is also Africa’s kuduro or funaná, or Brazil, or hip hop, or every other culture that landed swiftly in this welcoming country.
In 2009, seven years after the first concert, “TascaBeat – O Sonho Português” (“TascaBeat – The Portuguese Dream”) was released in Portugal, to wide acclaim, both from critics and public. It stayed in the Portuguese charts (Top 30) for four months and in 2010 it will be given international release. OqueStrada are:
Miranda - voice
Lima - Portuguese guitar
Zeto - guitar and voice
Marina - accordion
Pablo - contrabacia
Sandro Manuel - trumpet
It’s come full circle. A lot of Lusophone Africa’s music can be traced back to its former colonial master; it was the music of Portugal that first influenced its colonies, with the accordions and the guitars shaping such sounds as Cape Verde’s funaná and Angola’s semba. Now, it is funaná that is shaping the sound of OqueStrada, a thoroughly Portuguese group that specializes in a sound, writer Philip Graham calls ‘pan-Portuguese’. I fell hard in love with OqueStrada. It’s hard not to.
The clear ringing voice of its lead singer Miranda and the total energy and abandon displayed by this 5 person band is infections. OqueStrada splendidly incorporates the spirit of a changing Portugal. If you have ever been to Lisbon and experienced its multiculturalism, the sublime clash of Cape Verdean funaná with Portuguese Fado, the sound of semba wafting into your ear drums in downtown Lisbon, Brazilians and Angolans delighting themselves with Portuguese cuisine, then you will identify with OqueStrada and you will love them.
You will love their bohemian nature, their boundless energy, their love for music, their love for todays Portugal. Because only in todays cosmopolitan Portugal is it possible for such a band to emerge, a band that fuses fado with funaná and ska and African rhythms as if it was nothing new.
Their debut CD titled Tasca Beat (Tascas are a kind to the tapas bars of Madrid, a watering hole where one can get food and chat with friends and family) is one of those CDs that you can play from one end to the other, without skipping a song. It´s the best way to experience OqueStradas cornucopia of sounds and rhythms, and to truly appreciate their music. It will sound intimately Portuguese, but at the same time you will notice rhythms most associated with Angola and Cape Verde, and you might unearth a ska track, a flamenco song in Spanish, and Miranda singing in Creole and French. Included below are two songs that capture the essence of OqueStrada beautifully. Oxalá te Veja and Se Esta Rua Fosse Minha are two passionate songs that will render you incapable of sitting still and will perhaps make you love the wonders of globalization and the clash of cultures.
CD R E L E A S E
Tasca Beat
Portugal - Sony Music 2009
Europe: D-CH-A JARO June 2010, Rest Europe: between June - September 2009
R E V I E W S
In this debut there s all that makes this multi-national band from Almada one of the best and most imaginative Portuguese projects since ages: the fado as the base idea but hundreds of other styles more hip hop, ska, Brazilian music, waltz or morna, amongst many, always with delicious lyrics, pose and detours (Roberta Flack and Billy Idol included). Antonio Pires, Time Out, 2009
Taken by the hand and voice of Miranda – perhaps Carmen as first name, admirable and chameleon-type of creature able to play different personalities at the same time – they invent, madly, in the space of just one song, tangos/musette, mornas/flamenco, balcanic fados and bossas/ska. They jump, without falling, from Portuguese to Creole, from this to Castilian, to English or French (returning to the start place). Over one second, they replace the Billy Idol mask for the Roberta Flack one and, like a philharmonic band on acid, Pablo, Lima, Zeto and Donatello dream up the precise thing the person who coined the term “world music” was thinking about. João Lisboa, Expresso, 2009
It’s been seven years OqueStrada dedicated themselves to install the party wherever they pass. Now they decided to put all their dysfunctional ideas and that strange and bastard notion of musicality in a record with a delicious title (“Tasca Beat”). In OqueStrada’s songs there are braguesas [a portuguese rural, old type of acoustic guitar], cavaquinhos [the tiny Portuguese guitar that evolved to the Hawaiian ukulele], accordions, brass, cheesy folklore, druggy tango, pilgrimage music, fado sung by challenge, songs in Portuguese, in Brazilian, in Creole, in Spanish, in French and in English (all ill-accented), out of tune melodicas, drunk chants, … It’s like a philharmonic band that messed with the score sheets, where each one plays a different song, but all of it makes one to dance. João Bonifácio, Público, 2009
«Tasca Beat» is the popular neighborhood song based on a stylistic richness that goes from fado to popular music, passing through some balcanic references (which in OqueStrada’s vision come from some Portuguese tradition). Always with lots of humor in the mix. In a perfect world, «Tasca Beat» won’t be classified as world music as that term reduces the music that celebrates the artistic liberty that goes far away from the borders of the song. To listen in a tasca near you. David Pinheiro, Disco Digital, 2009
What these guys have created in Tasca Beat has never been done before in Portuguese music. Tasca Beat is the result of 7 years spent on the road soaking up the soul of Portugal, and it shows. Anyone who has ever been to Portugal and eaten its food, drunken its wine, reveled with its people and experienced its beauty will find that this album epitomizes Portugal, its exuberance, its irreverence, and its rhythm . What I like best about it however is that it goes deeper than that and incorporates the music of other countries Portugal has touched and vice-versa; Organito, inspired by the Angolan Bonga, and Tourné en Rond, inspired by Cape Verdean funaná, are examples. Kekfoi, one of my favorite tracks of the album, is a song that captures my feelings for OqueStrada, perfectly. Cláudio Silva
Marta Miranda has a special luminosity, unique, that merges between improvisation and audacity. The symbiosis starts in challenge singing or in fado, in circus luddism or foreignish (Killing Me Song). They are bold and innovative, graceful and nostalgic. (…) From the suburbs to the tascas of fado, from the revue to the old rooms of Paris. What is certain is that they and Marta Miranda exhibit something that we already absorbed in the old movies or from remote memories and they still sound like something fresh and new. Soraia Simões, Ruadebaixo.com
In OqueStrada, everything is incidental. The way is made out from a musical fusion without limits, without barriers and without horizons to castrate an unstoppable originality. The spectacle is there, the theatre is there, along with one dramatic expression and ability that this road music always on party recalls. The routes are diverse, emotions are differentiated, the passion raised is somehow abnormal given the dramatic expression, given the cultural universal image dyed by the music of Oquestrada. a-trompa.net, 2004
Their vitality is awesome, their communicative capacity also. Also awesome are their musical skills, the versatility and availability of each one and the group. Popular and with great quality. João Carneiro, Expresso
