J is for Jazz in Portugal
I grew up thinking that all jazz was jarring to the ears and a musical genre that was best avoided. Now that I’m a bit older and have more experience of the different forms of jazz, I really enjoy its softer side. I don’t know if I’ll ever learn to appreciate or love the noisy stuff though.
It might be worth giving it another go, however, because along with fado and classical music, there’s rather a lot of it about in Portugal. This week, Coimbra hosts its 10th International Jazz ao Centro (Jazz in the Centre) festival with a series of concerts scheduled in different venues around the city.
Image courtesy of MaAtE http://www.flickr.com/photos/tothmate/
Salão Brasil, with its big arched windows and creaky wooden floors, is one of the main venues and there are already some arty black and white photos of jazz musicians on the walls . The acoustics may not be the best but it draws in people wearing black and looking serious as they appear to appreciate the random pluckings of the double bass player and the flurries of notes from the other musicians. Other people go there too, so don’t feel you have to wear dark clothes.
A couple of years ago, the Jazz ao Centro organisers set up a stage in the ancient cobbled street of Quebra Costas. Just a few rows of chairs on a gentle slope in the warm May dusk and an air of expectation made for a very atmospheric setting. What a shame the musicians seemed hell-bent on ignoring each other. The three or four young men were so absorbed in their own instruments that the effect was discordant and off-putting. But then maybe I’m missing something, not being an aficionado of jazz.
This year’s Jazz ao Centro highlight is likely to be the concert in the recently renovated Santa Clara a-Velha Convent. I can just imagine the romantic effect of soft lighting on the golden sandstone walls. I only hope the music doesn’t spoil it all.
Talking of stone walls and ancient venues, I’m intrigued by the jazz concerts that are planned around the network of central Portuguese schist villages this summer. The schist villages I’ve been to are a mixture of abandoned homes that have disintegrated into piles of multicoloured stone and rotten wood and tiny houses that have been lovingly restored. Tucked away in the hills, these pretty villages will make great venues and are worth the drive even if the music turns out to be rubbish. One of the concerts, on July 14th, coincides with the outdoor art festival, Elementos à Solta (Art in the Wild), which I thoroughly enjoyed last year.
If you can’t make it to any of these jazz festivals in central Portugal this summer, not to worry. A a musical genre, jazz’s popularity has increased enormously in this country over the last twenty years and there are many events and clubs springing up all over the place. Unfortunately, due to financial constraints, some of the popular jazz festivals such as the Dixieland Festival, are on hold for the time being but there is still plenty of interest in and demand for the music.
I’m not likely to become a fan of fado music any time soon but I think it might be time to give jazz another chance.
What’s your opinion / experience of jazz in Portugal? Let me know in the comments.
Jazz in Portugal links:
Jazz in the schist villages – X Jazz
Jazz clubs and events in Portugal
Jazz festivals around Portugal
This post is part of my Personal A to Z of Portugal. If you’ve missed my previous posts, you can find them here.
For other Personal A to Zs of Portugal fellow bloggers, check out My A to Z Challenge: Portugal.
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Weekly Photo Challenge: Regret
This is the Fountain of Tears (Fonte das Lágrimas), which symbolises the never-ending regret that Prince Pedro experienced when his lover, Inês de Castro, was executed. What made it worse was that it was his own father, King Afonso of Portugal, who had sent Pedro away from the royal palace on a pretence so that he could have Inês killed.
The water symbolises Pedro’s endless tears over her death while the strands of grass swaying in the water represent her hair and the red stones are said to have been stained by her blood.
For the full story, read Eternal Love, Portuguese Style.
For my previous Weekly Photo Challenge posts, click here.
For other interpretations of ‘Regret’, follow the links in the Weekly Photo Challenge comments. Or add your own.
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Eternal Love, Portuguese Style
Long before Shakespeare created Romeo and Juliet, Portugal had its own real life romantic tragedy within the royal family in the shape of Pedro and Inês. Their love story has become legend and inspiration for poets and artists throughout the ages. With each telling of the tale, it becomes harder to differentiate between fact and fiction but the elements of forbidden but everlasting love remain at its core.
And what better place to learn about their romance than the place where they met and played out their romance? That’s why I went on a guided walk through the woods and botanical gardens of ‘Quinta das Lágrimas‘ or ‘Estate of Tears’ in Coimbra. Nowadays, the ‘Quinta das Lágrimas‘ is a luxury hotel but it was once the site of the royal palace and the backdrop to Pedro and Inês’ affair.
And I do mean affair. At nineteen, Pedro, son of King Afonso IV and heir to the Portuguese throne, was married off to Constança of Castille in order to seal an alliance between Portugal and Spain. The problems started when Pedro fell madly in love with Constança’s lady-in-waiting, Inês de Castro. His feelings were reciprocated and their relationship became an ill-disguised secret.
A folly in the old palace grounds, built during the Romance period to mark a place where Pedro and Inês' probably met in secret, using a secret tunnel nearby
Constança tried to discourage them by making Inês godmother to one of her children, thereby making her involvement with the child’s father, Pedro, incestuous but even this wasn’t enough to keep Pedro and Inês apart. They had four children of their own, and by then their relationship had soured King Afonso’s alliance with Castile.
Constança died in 1349 but despite his father’s urgings to remarry, Pedro was only prepared to marry Inês. She wasn’t considered worthy of the throne and his father forbade the marriage. Pedro still refused to marry anyone else and King Afonso, at his wits end, took advantage of Pedro’s absence one day in 1355 and sent three assassins after Inês. The place where she is said to have been killed was later dubbed the ‘Fonte das Lágrimas‘ or ‘Fountain of Tears’.
There is a small natural spring here which feeds the estate’s farmland through irrigation channels. At its mouth, thin grasses sway in the flow of the water, representing Inês’ hair and the stones under the water have a reddish tinge as a result of her blood being shed.
Fonte das Lágrimas / Fountain of Tears, Quinta das Lágrimas
A poem is carved into a stone plinth next to it, informing visitors that the fountain and stream symbolise the river of tears cried by Pedro at the death of Inês. And that with the eternal quality of true love, these tears continue to give sustenance to the flowers and trees in the very gardens that bore witness to their passion.
Poem at Fonte das Lagrimas
It was Pedro’s grandmother, Saint Queen Isabel, who had ordered the irrigation channels to be built to supply the vegetable gardens of the palace and neighbouring convent. If you eat at the Quinta das Lágrimas hotel, you could well be feasting on the food of love because its kitchen garden is still fed by these channels.
There is a point along these watercourses, near one of the secret passageways that Pedro and Inês supposedly crept through to meet up in the woods, which is known as the ‘Pipe of Love’. Our guide, Branca, invites any loving couples to step forward. According to the legend, if two people in love simultaneously drink the water as it pours from one channel to a lower one, their love will be everlasting. No one takes her up on the offer and I’m not surprised. It would take some very complicated and undignified positioning to accomplish the task.
Pipe of Love, Quinta das Lágrimas, Coimbra
Pedro’s love for Inês lived on after her death and he waged war against his father for having killed her. He never forgave his father and when he became king in 1357 he had Inês’ body dug up and crowned as queen, claiming that they had married in secret before she died.
The posthumous coronation of Inês
The legend says that after forcing the members of his court to kiss her decomposing hand and swear allegiance to their new queen, Pedro tracked down her assassins and killed them, ripping out their hearts with his bare hands.
To ensure they would be together in the afterlife, Pedro installed Inês’ body in the monastery of Alcobaça and had his own sarcophagus placed at the foot of hers. I haven’t been there yet but it looks well worth a visit. The attention to detail on the matching tombs is further evidence of Pedro’s devotion, with exquisite carvings of scenes from their lives together.
Pedro's sarcophagus at Alcobaça Monastery by syvwlch on Flickr.com
If you want to take a guided tour of the grounds at Quinta das Lágrimas, you need to book ahead on +351 918108232. The gardens are open Tues-Sun from 10am to 5pm in winter or 7pm in summer.
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Scarecrows in the City
In my village, most people just hang plastic sacks or old clothes on sticks in a bid to keep pesky birds off their crops. However, even scarecrows have to dress to impress at a festival, which explains the party clothes and elaborate faces of the exhibits in Coimbra’s 8th annual scarecrow festival.
Some are even wearing crowns, posing as merry kings, queens and princesses. The 42 schools, folkloric groups, charities and other organisations who contributed to the festival let their imaginations run wild.
The royal scarecrows are joined by a black-caped student, a knight, a ballerina, a ladybird and a beekeeper. Even the traditional scarecrows with straw beards and maize leaves for hands and feet have been made with care and attention to detail.
One of them even flies! The Passaro (Bird) flaps its great green wings over the foot of the steps that lead from Coimbra’s old shopping street, Rua Visconde Luz, down the side of crumbly little St Tiago’s church and into Praça Comerçio, home of the festival.
Whereas most scarecrows are created to scare birds away from crops, this bird is supposed to frighten humans. It isn’t particularly scary but it’s an interesting twist, if not entirely original; the Our Lady of Fátima crèche and infant school in neighbouring Pedrulha have made a giant crow with strips of black plastic.
Not content with making the Passaro and the student, Coimbra’s Prison Establishment have decided to provide visitors with a bit of history. The year 2011 marks Coimbra’s 900th year as a city following years of battles between the Moors and the Christians. Over the years of Muslim rule before that, Iberian Christians absorbed aspects of Muslim culture, traces of which remain to this day in Portuguese language art and food, and they became known as Mozarabs.
To celebrate Coimbra’s anniversary and the fact that there are always elements of culture that survive war and domination, a Mozarab scarecrow stands poised, ready to receive the city charter from Count Dom Henrique, the father of the first king of Portugal.
There’s more hands-on history to be had in the form of traditional games. I watch as a young boy throws an oversized coin into an angled wooden tray, hoping that it will disappear down one of the three round holes. He misses and his granddad takes the next shot to show him how it’s done. He looks pleased with himself as the wooden coin clatters through the hole into the box below. 
Other kids stagger jerkily on primary coloured stilts, the more confident ones manage two or more steps before losing their balance and reaching for the comfort of the ground with their feet.
In the shade of the tall buildings that border the square, donkeys flick away the flies as children dare each other to stroke them. Ordinarily, these beasts would be busy dragging carts through villages but today they’re here to carry excited children on their backs.
Meanwhile, women wearing headscarves and layer upon layer of skirts try to ignore the unseasonably hot weather in their bid to keep country traditions alive. Their home made cakes still taste good, even in the heat.
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Rediscovering Coimbra
Early starts will never win our hearts but this year my husband, Mike, and I have been timetabled to teach on Saturday mornings. As a sweetener, we’ve decided to reclaim the city from the drudgery of work and shopping by dedicating Saturday afternoons to rediscovering the delights of Coimbra.
We drive in, sleep-groggy; the streets are eerily deserted, parking blessedly easy. The kids are a joy to teach. By one o’clock, though, we are all happy to finish the lesson and start to the weekend.
To kick it off, Mike drives us to the esplanade for lunch; we’re too hungry to walk. The car rumbles and judders over the cobbled streets and through the dirty butterscotch stone arches of the 16th century aqueduct, past the Botanical Gardens.
We walk across the wide flat lawns of Green Park to the strip of riverside cafés and bars. Out on the decking, we bask in the warmth of the sun like happy dogs and listen to the squeals of amusement as children clamber onto the leg of the giant artificial grass teddy bear.
Underneath the pastel-coloured pedestrian bridge, bright yellow pedaloes bob patiently in the water, waiting for customers. Dazzling white light skips across the ripples of the water like glitter. Our salmon salads arrive and divert our attention. “It’s like being on holiday,” says Mike. I grin in agreement.
After lunch, we wander through the flickering shade of the camouflage-barked plane trees that flank the paths of Mondego Park. This is the older, prettier park with flowerbeds and a bandstand but my students prefer the newer, plainer Green Park. Maybe it’s because of the bear. 
We emerge at Largo da Portagem where a statue gazes across the river at the slightly sunken caramel-coloured Convento de Santa Clara-a-Velha. Since we’re in exploration mode, and conveniently next to the tourist information office, I decide to ask who he was. Given the quill in one hand and a sheet of paper in the other, I assume he was a writer. I’m definitely not expecting Tiago’s answer: “That’s ‘Mata Frades’, the Friar Killer.”
“The Friar Killer?”
“Yes. His real name is Joaquim António de Aguiar and he was Prime Minister in the 18th century. He got the name because he made a law that extinguished all monasteries, convents and other religious orders in Portugal.” I go back outside to share this information with Mike. He is impressed, I can tell.
We pass the pavement cafés, adjusting our eyes to the patterned black and white cobbles of the pedestrianised shopping street. After a cursory glance at the massive meringues in a cake shop window, we cut down some steps into the square below and find ourselves in a scarecrow fair.
Delighted by this unexpected and bizarre event we amble from stall to stall, admiring the ingenuity behind the newspaper scarecrows, the simple beauty of one made entirely from corn stalks and leaves, and the general abundance of colourful clothing and wonky facial features.
Wrinkled women from surrounding villages have been busy baking and are wearing traditional costume, complete with headscarves, aprons and layer upon layer of underskirts in order to ply their cakes and tarts.
Still full, we forgo the cakes and head to where a couple of boys are screwing their faces up at something on a stand. It’s a slice of beehive, trapped between sheets of glass and full of living, working bees. It’s almost grotesque but oddly captivating.
“Come on,” says Mike, leading me by the hand past the bored-looking donkeys and their snoozing owners. As we leave the square, the buildings huddle closer together, high above us, and we enter the shaded labyrinth of the Baixa.
This is the shabby part of town and I adore its faded charms, crumbling plasterwork and decaying balconies. Gloomy cubbyholes selling ancient hardware sit alongside cafés with original painted tiles on the walls. The harsh strip lighting in the cafés reveal cloth-capped men nursing bottles of Sagres lager. We are bombarded by various smells: coffee, ‘bacalhau’ (salted cod), bleach, suckling pig, ancient damp and wafts of cigarette smoke. It’s a far cry from the sleek modern shopping mall on the other side of the river.
Later, we go through one of the stone arched gateways to the ancient city that spills downhill from the university in search of a craft market I’ve heard about. Past the tourist tat shops and lo and behold, the worn steps of ‘Quebra Costas’, (backbreaking street), are strewn with stalls hosting elaborate and imaginative jewellery. I buy a brooch made from buttons as a souvenir.
We’re flagging now, after the early start, so we stop for a coffee then meander back towards the car. After all, we’ve got months of Saturday afternoons in Coimbra to look forward to.
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Hi, I'm Julie, a British expat living in central Portugal. I blog about my experiences of living in Portugal and travelling around this diverse and beautiful country. Whether you're thinking about moving to Portugal, looking for some out-of-the-ordinary trips within Portugal or just fancy a spot of armchair travelling, read on and enjoy.
