“The People Turn it Off and Go Out Looking for Fado” — Radio and the Fado Resistance to the Estado Novo in the 1930s

Abstract

Far from its current consecration and even before its domestication by Salazarism, fado went through dilemmatic phases throughout its existence. Among them are the early times of its mediatization, particularly the complex relationship with radio in the 1930s, with the Estado Novo and class prejudices attempting to ostracize fado or, at least, to stop the national legitimization of urban popular culture. The tensions that already surrounded fado were renewed and sharpened in the simultaneous context of the stabilization of the dictatorship and the implementation of radio in Portugal, placing the new means of sound diffusion in the centre of symbolic struggles around the “national song”. Involving dilemmas between stigma and fado legitimation, between its origin and propagation, between public diffusion and aesthetic or moral control, a connection between radio and fado was made, where several social actors positioned themselves, with different goals and strategies, and in which questions of programming, discursiveness and social status were tackled. This article aims to identify this set of interactions throughout the 1930s. It tries to understand how the establishment of the radio industry, with its various stations and nuances, became a stage and participant in a cultural process that, in some aspects, already preceded it. The research is based on contemporary press publications, specifically fado newspapers (Guitarra de Portugal, Canção do Sul) and magazines focused on radio (Rádio Semanal, Rádio Revista, Boletim da Emissora Nacional, Rádio Nacional).