“NoCova da Moura we had a purpose. As we had many problems of police aggression – in addition to the social situation, lack of employment, school dropout, drug use –, it was a way of claiming these problems”, said Lord Strike, in an interview with the Lusa agency.
From the beginnings of rap in Portugal, which exploded in the early 1990s of the 20th century, the young people who lived in Cova da Moura, which was in the news for the worst reasons, accumulated revolt and found in hip-hop a way to spread their thoughts.
“Nobody imagines the amount of music that circulated on cassettes and MP3’s and that were never recorded”, said Ermelindo Quaresma (Lord Strike), indicating that in those times of great creativity, the first stages were the neighborhoods, but that quickly spilled over to the whole world. side.
Police violence, lack of jobs, difficulties at school, but above all racism, were recurrent themes in the beats of these musicians, although few managed to record and even less sell the discs.
But rap achieved another feat: “It managed to make people, the young people of the neighborhood proud to say Cova da Moura out loud, to pronounce that name. Because, when you wanted to go get a job, if you said you were from Cova da Moura, you couldn’t get a job”.
“Anything that happened somewhere, Cova da Moura was always to blame.
In hip-hop, young people “posted” their thoughts, as they currently do on the internet, which leads Lord Strike to believe that rap was a kind of embryo of social networks.
“We felt that (rap) was a very useful tool for us, for what we wanted to talk about, our claims at the time, and until now, against the injustices of the world”, he said, adding that “people who disdained hip- hop didn’t realize that”.
It was the middle of the 90s (20th century) when Lord Strike took over the production of “Menace to Society”, the first rap group from Cova da Moura. Strike was also one of the founders of the Kova M festival, which he coordinated for several years. The first solo album (Negritude) will only arrive in 2012.
At its core, said the rapper, hip-hop remained a vehicle for vindication.
“Today you don’t hear political speeches that really talk about the people, the suffering of the people. What we hear from politicians is that they are going to subsidize this or that; they don’t talk about those who suffer the most, who have to spend their lives working, women with two or three jobs”, he lamented.
And he continued: “There are two ways of making demands. Either we go out on the street and strike, or we use music as a vehicle for dialogue between people, between young people”.
And he gave the example of rappers Azagaia (Mozambique) and Nagrelha (Angola), whose music moves millions of people in Africa and beyond. “In addition to being very good rappers at what they did, they were consistent,” he said.
Questioned about the problems that today have more place in Portuguese hip-hop lyrics, Lord Strike said that “it really is the question of survival, of life, of the precariousness in which we live. The question is not even the lack of jobs, but the poorly paid job, the lack of housing”.
“It’s no wonder that rap has become an international phenomenon”, he said, concluding: “It’s a song that was born for that, to be used against injustice”.
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