Um ‘olhar’ sobre jazz e censura em Portugal durante o Estado Novo (1933–1974)

Throughout the 20th century, censorship in Portugal was used as an
instrument of political power aimed primarily at controlling society in general (cf.
Cádima 1996; Azevedo 1999; Santos 2004; Cabrera 2006; Areal 2011). During the
Estado Novo, it served the interests of the regime and the official morality strongly
marked by the values of the Catholic Church, trying to silence opposition and cre-
ating the conditions to convey an anti-democratic, conservative and colonialist ide-
ology. The development of jazz in Portugal as a performative and social practice
began in the 1930s, with the appearance of syncopated sounds associated with
‘modern dance’. After a rapid proliferation of jazz bands in nightclubs in the urban
centres of Lis-bon and Porto, and a gradual presence on the radio in the following
decades (cf. Martins 2006; Santos 2007; Cravinho 2015a; 2015b; 2016c), from the
end of the 1950s, jazz became part of the regular programming of Radiotelevisão Por-
tuguesa (cf. Cravinho 2022a). These syncopated sounds and ‘modern dances’ from
abroad were continually repressed by the most conservative sectors of Portuguese
society and by the Catholic Church. Not only because these social and performative
practices coexisted in spaces of transgression, and as such were an attack on moral-
ity and good manners, but also because jazz never fit into the polarised model of
the Estado Novo regime’s cultural policy. The aim of this chapter is to contribute to the debate on censorship and cultural repression in Portugal in the 20th century,
from a jazz perspective.