Pedro Moreira

When I decided, in 2014, to study Radio ALFA – a radio station based in Paris broadcasting to the Portuguese community residing in this area through FM, the internet, and a digital cable channel – I was curious about the way it was promoted as ‘The Voice of Lusophony’, its actual slogan, as well as values ​​and discourses associated to it. As an ethnomusicologist I wondered how music was mediated and wanted to identify discourses about it on radio programmes. When radio programmers promote a certain notion of ‘community’, why do they choose specific music genres and artists over others? What is the relation between radio producers, the specific context, radio policy, and musical choices? Do certain musical choices and discourses reveal the broadcasting station’s policy and strategy in defining its target audience and a broader sense of community?

After some preliminary research my first interest was in defining the relationship between programming policies, in a broader sense, and the construction of an idea of a ‘Portuguese community’ imagined and mediated through the radio. I soon realized that the focus of the research would be on media production. As Peterson points out:

Just as ethnographies of media consumption have needed to move beyond reception to the creative spaces where people integrate media texts into their lives, so ethnographies of production must recognize the fundamental relationship between the production of texts, the construction of identity, and the connections between production cultures and the larger cultural worlds in which they are embedded. (Peterson 2003, 162)

The main questions I will address in this article are the following: What is the role of Radio ALFA in the Portuguese migrant context in the Paris area? What role does broadcasted ‘Portuguese’ music play in the construction of a notion of community? What is the role of fado in Radio ALFA broadcasting, and why was it so prominent in the interlocutor’s discourses? What role does fado play in negotiating identity in this migrant radio context?

For this purpose I have divided the chapter into four sections: (1) covering the state of the art concerning the role of radio in migrant communities from an anthropological and ethnomusicological perspective; (2) providing a brief historical overview of the relation between the Portuguese community and radio in France; (3) exploring the establishment of Radio ALFA and its broadcasting policy; and (4) analysing fado’s role in the radio station in defining and negotiating identity and experience.

The role of radio in migrant communities

Recently fields such as anthropology (Ferreira 2013; Kosnick 2007, 2012; Peterson 2003; Cottle 2000; Dayan 1999) and ethnomusicology (Toynbee and Dueck 2011) have begun to take an interest in media in the context of migrant communities. The existing ethnographies seek mainly to study the processes of self-representation in the media, focusing on the culture of origin and reception in the new country. As stated by the anthropologist Kosnick, ‘Migrant media are of prime importance as arenas for producing and circulating identity claims in order to intervene in the politics of representation’ (2007, 2–3).

The space they occupy mainly reveals an affirmation of values ​​of authenticity, ethnicity, and identity that aim to respond to their limited representation in the major and hegemonic media. As Cottle notes,

The media occupy a key site and perform a crucial role in the public representation of unequal social relations and the play of cultural power. It is in and through representations, for example, that members of the media audience are variously invited to construct a sense of who ‘we’ are in relation to who ‘we’ are not, whether as ‘us’ and ‘them’, ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’, ‘colonizer’ and ‘colonized’, ‘citizen’ and ‘foreigner’, ‘normal’ and ‘deviant’, ‘friend’ and ‘foe’, ‘the west’ and ‘the rest’. (2000, 2)

The impact of human mobility on a large scale, with people carrying expressive practices with them through media (e.g. audio and image), has been central to studies of music practices and their uses. As the ethnomusicologist Bruno Nettl states regarding migration and music in general, ‘There have been large numbers of musical results: preservation of old forms in new venues, but with changed functions; development of mixed, hybrid, syncretic forms of music; changed concepts of ethnic, national and personal identity; and lots more’ (2005, 335).

That is why studying music and its uses in the context of migrant groups enables us to move away from discourses that crystalize ethnicity. Riggins highlights how these voluntary minorities, in this case emigrants (one of the four groups he defines), produce this mediascape and shape their actions in the specific context of the host country and in relation to ethnicity: ‘The term ethnicity has been defined in a variety of ways, but there is general agreement that it refers to people who perceive themselves as constituting a community because of common culture, ancestry, language, history, religion, or customs’ (Riggins 1992, 1).

According to authors such as Alonso and Oiarzabal (2010) and Karim (2003), the concept of community, which can be analysed from different disciplinary perspectives, emphasizes its importance in these contexts, especially when intersected with that of identity. We may also recall the work of Appadurai and what he defines as the modern production of subjectivities in a world where the nation-state is no longer so important in defining individuals (Appadurai 1996, 16). Nevertheless, the idea of the nation-state in the context of migrant radio is relevant because it creates an abstract space related to the idea of a distant nation and even to specific regions and habits of the country of origin. The study of migrant minority media as an abstract space where ideas of a certain nation or region circulate can certainly question whether cultural groups are becoming less tied to geographic places due to the complexity of contemporary societies (Turino 2008). Nation, or in this case motherland, still plays an important role in the construction of identities and is not being completely diminished by global processes. It is through the circulation of identities and expressive symbols in this mediated and mediatized space that individuals of a certain community construct part of their individual and collective identity relating themselves to the nation or region to which they belong.

The relation between migrants and media in the new modern scenario allows for the production of individual and collective imagination that is not only physically based in the motherland. National and regional symbols, authentic or not, establish new imagined worlds marked by negotiation and reflection about migrant cultural practices and categories (Melo and Silva 2009, 36).

In the field of ethnomusicology Shelemay (2011), building on the work of Turino (2008), Anderson (1983), and Cohen (1985), questions the role of the symbolic construction of communities and their significance in the context of musical practices. As Shelemay asserts,

The approach that emerges in the context of Cohen’s symbolic anthropology, reflected in Shelemays’ study, highlights the community as more of an experience than a structure to be defined. Other studies within (ethno)musicology offer different perspectives. As Turino claims, ‘Music, dance, festivals and other public expressive practices are a primary way that people articulate the collective identities that are fundamental to forming and sustaining social groups, which are, in turn, basic to survival’ (2008, 2). We can add to this media and mass-mediated musical practices.

Therefore, in this chapter, rather than describing or classifying a structure, I am interested in understanding the experiences associated with the idea of ​​community in the context of Radio ALFA, particularly in the case of fado, and how identities are mediated and experienced through transformation and difference (Hall 1990, 235). In this sense, ‘The performing arts are frequently fulcrums of identity, allowing people to intimately feel themselves part of the community through the realization of a shared cultural knowledge’ (Turino 2008, 2).

It is thus central here to address the role of music in the construction of experiences associated with the notion of ‘Portuguese community’, knowing that

music helps generate and sustain the collective, while at the same time, it contributes to establishing social boundaries both within the group and with those outside of it. Music can also provide avenues for penetrating these social boundaries and bringing new constituencies into the fold. (Shelemay 2011, 368)

It is in the way these communities are established that it becomes crucial to analyse the associated discourses that accompany and legitimize their mediated expressive practices.

Portuguese community and radio in France: An overview

The rise of pirate or independent radio broadcasting allowed the Portuguese to launch radio projects that sought to mirror other social and cultural realities of emigration. In the context of French radio policy, until then conditioned by state monopoly, the legal framework of private radio gained more supporters in the Socialist Party. In his election campaign, François Mitterrand promised to review the situation if elected, which eventually happened. On 29 July 1982, the Fillioud Act, named after the then minister of communications, Georges Fillioud, liberalized FM frequencies and allowed radio stations to broadcast freely (Kuhn 1995, 77 et seq.).

In the early 1980s three Portuguese pirate radio stations were operating in the Paris region: Radio Eglantine, Radio Clube Português (RCP), and Portugal no Mundo, closely linked to the Cultural Associations community. For example, at Radio Eglantine the musician Nicolau Lopes presented the project for the creation of the Paris Philharmonic Band in 1986. As Cunha argues, it was in this new scenario that ‘the concept of the Portuguese community, as a quasi-unique symbolic landmark, is gradually being diluted in favour of a representation that values public space as a privileged sphere of belonging’ (2003, 7). It was in this space of wider representation, helped by the associative movement and concern for the second generation (children of the emigrants), that Radio ALFA appeared, a hybrid radio station designed to reflect the experiences and everyday life of Portuguese emigrants in the Paris region (Laureano 2011).

Radio ALFA: Broadcasting for the Portuguese community

Rethinking the image and media representation of the Portuguese community was a main priority to Radio ALFA’s founders, who sought a different symbolic self-representation: ‘To distance themselves from the stereotypes associated with elder emigrants and establish a more contemporary relationship with the motherland; showing a modern and up to date Portuguese community’ (Silva, 6 November 2014). This was a radio station that did not relate to the motherland only through memory, but also through the current reality, showing to the community ‘another Portugal’.

The broadcasting policy defined in the early days is still present today in the discourse of the current radio director. The main purpose was to define a hybrid radio that served the community in a context of emigration:

We did not want a radio that was turned entirely to Portugal, but a radio that dealt with the reality of the Portuguese community in France, the reality in which they were integrated. It is of no interest to a Portuguese emigrant to know how the traffic is in Lisbon when he is stuck in traffic on the A86 in Paris! (Silva, 7 November 2014)

Even if Radio ALFA is presented discursively as a community radio, officially it is a commercial enterprise, giving it different legal obligations.

According to the current director of Radio ALFA, Fernando Lopes,

The role of Radio ALFA is to inform about Portugal and the Lusophone countries, to talk about daily practical questions in the country where they live, which is France, and also to give them world news. It is to really integrate the Portuguese living here … . The Portuguese news can be delivered by a Portuguese radio, the French news, by a French radio, but the news to the Portuguese community living in the Paris area can only be delivered by Radio ALFA. (Lopes, interview 2014)

Beyond the purely linguistic meaning, Lusophony has at least three interrelated interpretations. Firstly, Lusophony is a geo-linguistic space, that is, a number of highly dispersed regions, countries and societies whose official and/or maternal language is Portuguese. Secondly, Lusophony is a sentiment, a memory of a common past, a partition of common culture and history. Thirdly, it is a set of political and cultural institutions attempting to develop the Portuguese language and culture in Portuguese speaking spaces and fora. (Sousa and Pinto 1999, 2)

According to the radio station director, imagining this community is one of the biggest challenges, as it is difficult to understand what constitutes the community and to define the programming grid according to it. If the targets were initially the ‘housewife’ segment in the morning, the ‘worker’ in the afternoon, and the second generation at night, this distinction has now become more difficult to make. The broadcasting must change, because the younger generation wants different things than their parents and grandparents, and the region now also houses new emigrants with different tastes: ‘The new emigrants are very interested to hear about Portugal, they will, for sure, listen to Radio ALFA. The great challenge is keeping the Luso-descendants interested, particularly those who have married a non-Portuguese wife, for instance. When they’ll have children, why listen to Radio ALFA?’ (Lopes, interview 2014).

The dynamics of production and mediation of this fluid and imagined community is what characterizes this ethnic minority media. This constant reflection reveals the construction of identities and an imagined community, the negotiations of memory and the adopted practices of the expressive culture. The media production must consider the commercial nature of the radio as well as the specific quota of legally established French music (about 40 per cent), which include the major hits from pop to rock, hip-hop, reggaeton, and also French popular music, leaving 60 per cent of the broadcasting schedule for Portuguese music, which also includes Lusophone music from Cape Verde, Brazil, Angola, and other places.

(New) fado, identity, and experience

Fado is one of the symbols of Portuguese expressive culture used in the construction of identity and a sense of community by Radio ALFA. To better understand the role of fado in identity processes we should recall some important moments of change in the recent history of the genre. One of the most important moments was the inscription of ‘Fado, urban popular song of Portugal’ on the representative list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2011. The presentation text submitted to UNESCO states:

Fado is a performance genre incorporating music and poetry widely practised by various communities in Lisbon. It represents a P ortuguese multicultural synthesis of Afro–Brazilian sung dances, local traditional genres of song and dance, musical traditions from rural areas of the country brought by successive waves of internal immigration, and the cosmopolitan urban song patterns of the early nineteenth century. (UNESCO n.d.)

This musical genre is ‘usually performed by a solo singer, male or female, traditionally accompanied by a wire-strung acoustic guitar and the Portuguese guitarra’, and its ‘dissemination through emigration and the world music circuit has reinforced its image as a symbol of Portuguese identity, leading to a process of cross cultural exchange involving other musical traditions’ (UNESCO n.d.). As stated in the UNESCO text, emigration and the world music circuit have reinforced the image of fado as a symbol of Portuguese identity, mainly through the so-called novo fado (new fado).

It is interesting to note that the emergence of novo fado, mainly after the political stabilization of post-dictatorship Portugal and the transnational music industries, specifically world music, does not necessarily entail a rupture with ‘old fado’, but mainly renewing the presentation and performance of fado. As the Portuguese musicologist and fado expert Rui Vieira Nery affirms,

Other relevant fado scholars, such as the musicologist Richard Elliot, point out factors that have contributed to the emergence of novo fado: the depolarization of ideological positions surrounding the music following the revolutionary period (i.e. mid-1970s and early 1980s); the potential conflict between national and European identity; the emergence of a world music industry; and the use of new technological opportunities in world music making (i.e. recording, performance, etc.) (Elliot 2010, 162–3). Other studies of novo fado focus on its transcultural dimension (Fonseca 2011, 59–98) or the use of fado in the processes of identity and authenticity construction in migrant communities (Holton 2016; Côrte-Real 2010, 87).

As he also states, this new fado is supported by the professional heritage of Amália Rodrigues or Carlos do Carmo, fadistas that had to update their shows’ scenic production in order to enter the international music circuits.

For migrant communities the idea of novo fado is very appealing, because it is able to communicate the image of a modern Portugal and is not music for the elderly, as shown, for instance, with the Portuguese community in New Jersey, United States. According to scholar of Portuguese literature and culture Kimberly Holton, in the US context the emergence of ‘second generation luso-descendants fadistas challenges the notion … that fado is “old people’s music”, and that fado performed for immigrant audiences recalls time periods, places and events that young people can’t relate to’ (2016, 219).

The main fado radio show, which became a reference for emigrants in France, was Alfama by Amílcar Sanches, who produced it for twenty-two years until 2011. According to Sanches, ‘fado is part of the radio’s mission: ALFA should not live without this part of fado. To deprive ourselves of this genre would surely make us lose many listeners’, and he continues to argue that younger generations of Lusophone descendants have contact with fado through these broadcasts (LusoJornal, 6 April 2011). To the radio director fado also plays a fundamental role: ‘Fado in France is considered as a part of Portuguese identity: Fado is Portugal, Portugal is fado … that’s it!’ (Lopes, interview 2014). According to the fado programmer, ‘fado in France is part of the Portuguese identity. Amália Rodrigues was very well known here and had great names composing music for her, like Alain Oulman or Charles Aznavour’ (Silva, interview 2014).

Amílcar Sanches suggested to Armando Lopes (radio station owner) that he invested in a space for live fado concerts in a warehouse (in the radio building), naming it ‘Sala Vasco da Gama’. The live experience, according to Sanches, was critical to the community and the radio. Over the years, Amílcar Sanches introduced the community to fado singers just starting their careers:

Today I see that Mariza is an international star, but I remember when I went to Lisbon and nobody knew her. She sang here early in her career, as happened to Ana Moura, Joana Amendoeira, Cristina Branco … Mísia sang for the first time in Paris in a Radio ALFA concert, without musicians, with recorded music. (LusoJornal, 6 April 2011)

in the past, there were less people singing fado (in Paris). Now you have some more, especially in pseudo-Portuguese restaurants, but the quality … it’s better not to talk about it. One of the main fado restaurant was in Versailles, called Saudade, and they used to bring some fadistas from Portugal … not always top fadistas, but it was ok. (Silva, interview 2014)

However, Radio ALFA has promoted several fado nights with fadistas living in France. Recently, the presenters of the programme Só Fado (Only Fado) organized the 6ème Nuit de Fado de Paris held on 3 March 2017, only with fadistas living in France. As the presenter Odete Fernandes stated, ‘This proves that we have great artists here, and with them we can have great fado moments with a good artistic quality.’ Experiencing live fado is one of the main objectives of the programme: ‘Usually we take fado to the audience, in their homes, through radio. This time they came to us, to listen to fado here’ (LusoJornal, 8 March 2017). This is one of the major lines of the programming policy: live experiences and the promotion of fado, making Radio ALFA central in the way fado is promoted and listened to:

Today fado is considered to be fashionable and I believe that in a few years we will have more fado in Paris than in Lisbon. This is also a result of Radio ALFA’s struggle and of many who take fado to every little place in Paris, like restaurants, for instance. And we have this programme, Só Fado that is directed by three great fado names: Fernando Silva, Odete Fernandes and Manuel Miranda, that make a tireless effort to take fado as far as possible. (LusoJornal, 8 March 2017)

At the moment, the station broadcasts Só Fado on Fridays from 9.00 pm to 11.00 pm with the presenters Odete Fernandes, Manuel Miranda, and Fernando Silva. When questioned about the importance of the programme, Fernando Silva said that it is very popular and important in maintaining the audience, because besides music it also offers interviews with fado singers from both France and Portugal. Of course, this does not prevent fado from being included in other programmes, like Ponto de Encontro.

The media representations of expressive practices such as fado, in this context, aim to leverage an image of this renewed community and traditions that are distinct from old memories and a country ‘stopped in time’ mainly associated with first-generation emigrants. Fado, which is considered a symbol of Portuguese identity and, to some extent, tradition, is equally used to contest the idea of ​​an ‘old Portugal’ in contrast to a ‘modern Portugal’, especially through the mediation and promotion of novo fado. Radio programmes about fado or live performances in the studio or in Sala Vasco da Gama promote the new fadistas who often sing in the world music circuit and enjoy considerable international visibility. The case of fado is, in this context, paradigmatic of the mediation by ethnic minority radio of identity symbols that contribute to the construction of a new image of Portugal and the Portuguese community in France, associated with novo fado and its cosmopolitanism. Fado allows us to put into perspective the various layers of the community, including first-generation emigrants, their descendants, new emigrants, and the French themselves, and how Radio ALFA responds to this complex reality from the perspective of a commercial radio station. The multiple expressions help to maintain this imagined community and to delimit new frontiers inside and outside the group (Shelemay 2011), attending to the community, while at the same time capturing the interest of the French population in this musical genre.

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