Farewell to Zeca Afonso at the Lisbon Coliseum 40 years ago
On January 29, 1983, exactly 40 years ago, Zeca Afonso finally gave his concert in his own name in the great historic hall of the Portuguese capital, the Coliseu dos Recreios. But it would be a farewell to the stage, the most immortalized of all (due to the album “José Afonso Ao Vivo no Coliseu” and the record filmed by RTP that would lead to the DVD), although the final concert had been at the Coliseu in Porto, the May 25 of that year 1983.
In the recording filmed by RTP at Coliseu dos Recreios, we see a room overflowing with people. When Zeca Afonso enters the stage, with his hair a little disheveled and his signature glasses, Luís Filipe Costa’s performance gives way to a long standing ovation from the entire audience full of affection and gratitude, in tribute to all those years . But José Afonso still seemed tense, perhaps worried about the responsibility of being able to physically endure an entire concert.
Everyone knew that José Afonso was sick. The musician suffered from an advanced and incurable neurodegenerative disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Aware of this situation, his colleagues from Cooperativa Eranova, who had fought for the professionalization of musicians and essentially to stop playing for free, organized Zeca Afonso’s concert at Coliseu dos Recreios. Francisco Fanhais, Zeca Afonso’s companion in several actions across the country during the PREC (Revolutionary Process in Progress) and member of the Eranova Cooperative, remembers the preparations well: “it was something that gave us a lot of work, but also a lot of enthusiasm”, he tells the our radio. “When we realized, and so did he, the health problem he had, we thought he should do a concert, if he had the strength for it. We got him excited, he found the courage to face (the concert at the Coliseum), chose the repertoire, hired musicians. The location was chosen, the Coliseum was paid, television was contacted and the show was organized. We had the impression that Zeca was making a huge effort to get to the end of the show. Expectations were exceeded, because Zeca was a little hesitant at first, but little by little, as what he sang found in the hearts of the thousands of people who were going to fill the Coliseum, he overcame it and in the end it was he who was in charge and who waved her arms, marked rhythms and beats. That was an impressive thing”.
Julio Pereira was one of the main musicians to accompany Zeca Afonso in the concert, especially in the second half. More complicated were the preparations. “It is good to mention that this show took place when there was no concert production. It was all in the nick of time. And it became possible because of Cooperativa Eranova, where all the great singers were, like Zeca, Vitorino or Sérgio Godinho”. The countdown to the Colosseum concert marks the accommodation of other musicians involved, Janita Salomé, for another very obvious reason. “I have a bad memory given the state he was in and the awareness that it was the last time he sang. I even prefer not to save those moments and keep the best ones”. Journalist Viriato Teles, who became close to Zeca Afonso in previous years, mentions that his fragile condition mobilized some care at the Coliseu dos Recreios: “not in official terms, and without Zeca he knew, and the family itself thought not, there were doctors strategically positioned in the front rows. There was this problem of not knowing how things were going to happen”.
There were many personalities who wanted to be present at this concert by José Afonso at the Lisbon Coliseum, including the “Captains of April”, like the lieutenant colonel Vasco Lourenço. “The Coliseu dos Recreios was the main concert hall at the time. And it had a very special meaning. It was there that a very special event took place in March 1974, when Grândola Vila Morena was sung, which became the second password for the 25th of April. It was at the Coliseum that there were some important shows after the 25th of April. sand the concert had not been at the Lisbon Coliseum, the meaning would not have been the same”.
In the first songs of Zeca Afonso’s concert on January 29, 1983, the lights reflected in his glasses were not just those of the room, they were, above all, of the university Coimbra where he passed. The charm of the farewell sounded contradictory, because the song was fading. Flanked by four instrumentalists from the city bathed by the Mondego river – Lopes de Almeida and Octávio Sérgio on Portuguese guitars and António Sérgio and Durval Moreirinhas on other guitars – Zeca was more absorbed, sometimes singing with his hands in his pockets, sometimes sitting down to rest and drink more a few drops of water. His last album, released in 1981, was curiously a return to his roots: “Fados de Coimbra”.
To the fifth song of the guaranteed, ‘Autumn Ballad’, José Afonso’s air becomes even more charged when he arranges for audio to sing the premonitory verses: “Waters from the sources shut up / ó streams cry / that I won’t sing again”. When José Afonso sits down after those verses, he seems grimly defeated by fate. The room shudders with those verses, with a cruel new meaning. in the letter
“It was known that José Afonso would be very acceptable to give shows again. Everyone knew that a new show was practically impossible and that this was a farewell, no matter how much we didn’t accept it. , there is a very clear moment right in the first songs, in Balada de Outono, in which he sings the verse ‘that I won’t sing again’, in which there is a break in his voice. in the whole room, because I had the notion that this would happen, that he wouldn’t sing again”, remembers with journalistic precision Viriato Teles, who that night was reporting for the newspaper Se7e. Viriato Teles, who was one of the many present in the room, was standing, zealously close to the stage after having broken his glasses days before and with no other remedy for his myopia than being close to the event.
To other spectators present, Sergio Godinho, these verses “had a poignant meaning”. Francisco Fanhais remembers that these verses provoked “a collective tremor in the entire Coliseum, which is something I will never forget. I will never forget the courage he had and that he transmitted to all of us”.
The dossier of lyrics that was open for José Afonso to be able to sing and leaf through throughout the concert was marked in red with words of encouragement written by Francisco Fanhais. “Strength, José, turn the page!”; “2 instrumental interventions – you can rest a little”; “Stay strong, boy!” “These are the little stimuli that I wrote to encourage Zeca to overcome the poor health condition he was in”, Fanhais tells us.
On the sixth song, ‘Canção de Embalar’, José Afonso is alone on stage with his old friend from Coimbra, guitarist Rui Pato. Next, Zeca Afonso confesses that he is not “sure to sing in a single string” the ‘Christmas of the Simples’‘, known as the music of windows. It is in this song that Francisco Fanhais appears on stage for the choirs. “At that time, I spoke to Zeca: ‘ò Zeca, I also want to do a little leg, in a song on the show. We were there to see what it was and (the decision) was the Simples Christmas. Zeca got to that point and started talking. I was at the side of the stage, behind the curtain, seeing that he still forgot to call me and that I had to sneak on stage. ‘O Zeca, call me’. He heard me calling. My only vocal and musical participation (from the concert at the Coliseu) was singing with him at Natal dos Simples.
In this Janeiras song, Zeca’s left hand starts to dance. There is an immense body that begins to be reborn. And the TV camera focuses on the various faces, and they all hum along: Othello with a harpsichord, Sérgio Godinho in another row of the audience.
“Where are the new generations?”, asks Zeca Afonso before singing the famous ‘Vampiros’, where Janita Salomé, Júlio Pereira and flutist Sérgio Mestre appear, who make the choirs in brotherhood, like three bodies in a single rock of flesh and with a lot of soul. At the front of the stage, a choir of thousands of spectators joins them, including the Carnation Revolution soldier, Vasco Lourenço, filmed with rapt emotions, singing the old theme of aesthetic rupture with the tradition of Coimbra.
At halftime, Júlio Pereira massaged Zeca Afonso in the dressing rooms. “He explained to me that I didn’t know how it was done”, admits Júlio Pereira. “There was a great deal of nerves, which manifested itself in the first part of the concert. The second part starts to be more relaxed because he was playing with his musicians: me, Guilherme Inês, Rui Castro and mainly Janita Salomé and Sérgio Mestre. There, there was already a habit, after having done 150 concerts. It was already more rotated and you can see it in the video. You can clearly see that in the second half he starts to get more relaxed”. Janita Salomé also feels José Afonso’s physical growth throughout the concert. “He loosened up more and gained confidence. Apparently not, he was a confident, assertive and objective man in his interventions. In adversity, he was strong and overcame. He overcame the terrible disease that affected him ”.
Before singing ‘A Morte Saiu à Rua’, José Afonso accepted the theme from Adriano Correia de Oliveira, another old comrade from Coimbra, who died three months earlier. The song had a different treatment, with more drumming, mainly coming from the hands of Guilherme Inês, busy with the congas. Three themes later, in ‘Milho Verde’, Zeca Afonso recalls the similarities of the song with African rhythms, in an overwhelmingly national theme, where one feels an intonation of Alentejo singing in this version – which is not only due to the presence of Janita Salmé in the voices.
Even under the emotions of a farewell concert, José Afonso keeps his spirit of companionship very much alive. He praises Fausto’s album, “Por Este Rio Acima”, still a few months old, and recalls the albums that Vitorino and Sérgio Godinho, also present in the room, were about to release.
Zeca Afonso cannot stop praising the times of the PREC – “a time when the people were the subject of history” and when “it was more than putting a vote in the ballot box”.
The RTP camera will travel from one end of the room to the other, showing an overcrowded room, with many heads (some of them recognizable) and no empty space. You see people looking old and wintery, with trench coats and haircuts from another time.
In ‘Venham Mais Cinco’, the Coliseum lights up with lighters raised in the air, while on stage one feels the African music bug making bodies move and giving new life to Zeca. Zeca’s voice reaches falsettos and projects beyond, and the illness recedes in those moments, with so much joy in living.
For the end, the apotheosis is saved, with “that brand new song called Grandola Vila Morena”. Zeca Afonso, with paperwork in his hair, launches the challenge: “if you want to join, I don’t know if this is allowed”. A series of personalities takes the stage. All embracing, they undulate, from the stage to the stands and cabins, as if it were a huge group of Alentejo singers.
Sérgio Godinho was one of the many who took to the stage for the final theme. “A series of musicians were there, brothers in arms, in great communion. Also because the Grândola had been sung on that stage in other circumstances. Everything was full of symbolism and the joy of music”. Júlio Pereira remembers that in 1983, Grândola Vila Morena did not deserve the same exaltation as another. “There has already been little collective enthusiasm for singing this song. The entire music landscape on television and radio had completely changed. But Grândola no Coliseu was really moving, being sung with fantastic joy and enthusiasm”. Vasco Lourenço was one of the April captains to take the stage to sing Grândola. “I was arm in arm with the engineer Lourdes Pintassilgo and Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho. It was in fact a concert that had a strong importance and was, to a certain extent, Zeca’s farewell to the stage”.
Image of the lyrics of the song kindly sent and authorized by Francisco Fanhais.