“History always favors the winners”: Heróis do Mar and the invention of nationalist pop in the 1980s

Abstract

Pioneers in performing international pop styles in Portugal, the group Heróis do Mar initiated an historical revisionism of the Portuguese Discoveries, exalting both the spirit of crusade and the so-called Portuguese universalism. Assuming that audiovisual culture was a key element in the Portuguese cultural life in the 1980s, and that the Portuguese Discoveries found in pop music a new form of transmission and celebration, in this article I analyze the emergence of Portuguese nationalist pop through the practices, rituals, and discourses of Heróis do Mar, a group that developed a peculiar relationship between pop music, nation, and the uses of History.