Primavera Sound Porto: With this big pemba parade, any festival is at peace

At this point, it will not be necessary to write any more: Bruno Nogueira, Manuela Azevedo, Felipe Melo, Nuno Rafael and Nelson Cascais give one of the best compliments to “Bemba” (famous, peregero, malandro, sentimental) that anyone can do.

With about ten years of ‘shooting’, Leave Bimba in Peace may have become a ensemble: it is a ‘roadshow’ that highlights the irresistible, perhaps vital, characteristics of a culture considered low, shifting categorization into the realm of cognition.

The crowd on the main stage of Primavera Sound Porto filled in little by little, in a sun-baked setting on the sea side (however, black clouds appear again), with a pebble-soaked floor after the previous day’s bog. Please Oscar, Depression Award Winner, Leave Us Alone.

The five members of “Pimbas”, dressed up, condensed into 50 minutes a repertoire that goes both to cabaret and to ballads, offering songs of characters like Quim Barreiros or Ágata’s outfits that perfectly fit them. The effect is this: the “pimba” takes off the cheap clothes and wears a more expensive brand, but instead of doing it just to show status, she discovers that after all there are other clothes that look good on her.

Bruno Nogueira is the master of ceremonies, a comedian who makes humor and sings as best he can (and he can’t go wrong), Manuela Azevedo is the “musical” professional vocalist, using her tremendous voice (best ever from country pop/rock) as if That every song came out of her womb. She’s also the group’s percussionist, brilliantly doing a job that needed little or nothing to get her going in Clã. Milo, Rafael and Cascais are the masters of luxury.

From ’24 Rosas’ (José Malhoa) to ‘Os Bichos da Fazenda’ (Quim Barreiros), the bar has always been kept very high: ‘Nobody, nobody’ and ‘Taras e Manias’ (Marco Paolo), ‘The funny Vem Devagar, Emigrante (Graciano Saga), in semi-tragicomic rap, “Bebé” (Romana) with a ferocious rhythm, “A Garagem da Vizinha” (again Quim) in its allegorical motifs, and a few others, a distinct national character left a mark in the tenth edition of the Porto Festival. .