Cara de Espelho: Time to Protest

Carlos Guerreiro had not felt an adrenaline rush like this since he was 15. That was during the years of the Estado Novo – the Portuguese dictatorship that endured for nearly half a century (1926-1974) – when he was still a kid but often being summoned to take the stage with some of the most prominent protest singers of the era, the legendary José Afonso among them. Guerreiro was never arrested, although he knew the regime’s police could storm any impromptu show that he played. “This feeling has nothing to do with the music itself or with the artistic life, but with this fear,” he says. “I never felt that again, but maybe one day we will play a concert and some far-right guy will come after us.”

Cara de Espelho are a Portuguese supergroup made up of Carlos Guerreiro (from Gaiteiros de Lisboa), brothers Pedro da Silva Martins and Luis José Martins (Deolinda), Maria Antónia Mendes (former singer of A Naifa and Señoritas), Nuno Prata (Ornatos Violeta) and Sérgio Nascimento (Humanos). In recent years, whenever they met backstage at festivals and concerts, they kept promising to get together and work on a new project, but it took the looming rise of the far-right in the country for them to find the right trigger. Cara de Espelho (which translates as ‘mirror-face’) is a musical way of Portugal looking at itself, acknowledging its virtues and, mostly, its flaws.

Along with Pedro da Silva Martins’ special knack for writing catchy tunes with poignant lyrics, and the band’s marvellous arrangements (owing to Portuguese folk traditions, post-punk and Arabic twists), Maria Antónia Mendes sings about a country dealing with hate speech, tax evasion, political corruption, its supposed authenticity, populist strategies, police violence, deregulated neoliberalism and the mythologised and troubling way Portugal looks at its own history as a coloniser.

“I was done with music,” confesses Mendes, “And I was enjoying my newfound life, with free weekends, when Sérgio first called me up and caused me a problem with this invitation to join them. I only left my sofa to sing these words. I’m old enough not to be singing unrequited love songs. I feel it’s urgent for us to raise our voices, to fight this much-needed struggle, and to hold an ironised mirror in front of some ridiculous, albeit embellished, ideas that are circulating around us.”

It all started, as Pedro da Silva Martins recalls, with a phone call from Guerreiro and Nascimento asking him to write the songs for their new band. He instantly accepted, as long as he was allowed to join the band too. And so Cara de Espelho were born, Martins penning the songs that Guerreiro would then arrange with his array of peculiar and home-built instruments. Although the arrangements would be adapted by Luís José Martins on guitar and Nuno Prata on bass, his imprint is a major part of Cara de Espelho’s identity.

When Songlines visits the band during rehearsals for the first few concerts, Guerreiro takes us on a tour around the table where his instruments rest. There is a regular hurdy-gurdy alongside another that plays a single-note drone, operated by a sewing machine pedal going through a bicycle wheel; lying next to a series of flutes, there is a unique ‘carretofone’, a string instrument built out of a pan and the reel of a fishing rod, that we can hear in the song ‘Testa de Ferro’; finally, there’s the ‘túbaros de Orfeu’, elongated plastic tubes he blows into to provide bass notes to some of the tracks. Guerreiro, who has shared the stage with José Afonso, Fausto and José Mário Branco, the greatest Portuguese protest singers prior to the Carnation Revolution in 1974, simply says this about his unusual instruments: “We may be bleeding inside, but we still have to find some humour.”

Cara de Espelho fine-tuned the show they have been putting on since February, in Cineteatro D. João V, in Amadora, on the outskirts of Lisbon, just around the corner from where Pedro and Luis grew up and their parents owned a restaurant. Pedro recalls when he and his friends liked to disrupt the shows that took place in that same venue during their adolescence. Now he is on stage, teasing the audience with words that aim to put an end to political apathy.

Deolinda also took their first steps in the neighbourhood. The fictional character that, to some extent, was the narrator of the band’s songs, took inspiration from a suburban perspective on Portugal’s idiosyncrasies. With Deolinda, Pedro da Silva Martins was already venturing into critical and satirical songs. And none made more of an impact than ‘Parva Que Sou’ (How Stupid of Me), a stinging take on today’s working world that had for a chorus the lyrics ‘how stupid a world, where you need to study in order to be a slave.’

“I don’t know if I can call it the power of a song, but at the time I realised how strong a song can be in a particular context,” says Pedro regarding ‘Parva Que Sou’. “I also learned about all the manipulation that can happen around a song. That is also present in what we are doing now as Cara de Espelho. This is surely an artistic path that I’m drawn to and I do feel the need for this kind of communication. We have to be annoying and inconvenient to some, we have to point fingers and hit where it hurts. This is also an exercise in democracy, and it is crucial that we do it using our tools – music, that is.”

At one of Cara de Espelho’s first shows, in Lisbon, the musical prowess and excellence of the songs on their self-titled debut (which they play alongside a few unreleased tracks) is clear; these are songs rooted in popular rhythms but porous to a modern and electric twist. What’s more, there is an unquestionable instant bond with the audience, who are likewise troubled by the surge of the far-right. On March 10, a week after the show, Portugal’s general election confirms the dramatic rise of its far-right Chega party (who now hold 48 of 230 seats in Parliament).

When they finish the show, get rid of their instruments (except for a drum and a flute) and gather together front of stage to sing ‘Varejeiras’, there is a sense that they are going to the streets in protest. At that moment, Cara de Espelho hold up another mirror, not only unveiling the divisiveness of political speech, but also suggesting that each one of us leaves our own seats and joins them.

This article originally appeared in the May 2024 issue of Songlines. Never miss an issue – subscribe to Songlines today