This track is dedicated to my great-great-grandfather Manuel Bernard.
He was born in 1847 in Ponta Delgada, Flores Island, Azores, Portugal.
It appeared as the last track on Spastic Rhythms vol 1 (2021), in a Dave Black solo rendition of a piece by the Electricka Zoo.
It originally appeared on The Electricka Zoo (2017), and on the Other Islands: 2012-2018 compilation. It’s based around a (non-diatonic) Cmaj7 – Amaj7 pattern, with a bossa nova rhythm.
The words are in (beginner) Portuguese:
Eu gosto de falar
no meus ancestrais
de as ilhas Atlânticas
Madeiras e Açores
Portugal is the westernmost country in Europe, with its back to it geographically and culturally. It was the edge of the known world for Europeans until the Age of Discovery. The Azores islands are even further west.
As a teenager, Manuel Bernard stowed away on a passing American whaling ship.
From a remote island in the Atlantic ocean, he ended up on an equally remote island in the Pacific – on the opposite side of the world, in Wellington, New Zealand.
He married Ann Rayner, a daughter of English immigrants. The family lived as farmers in the Wellington and Wairarapa regions (where I live now).
I’ve travelled once to Portugal (on my only trip to Europe thus far), in 2008. I spent a fortnight in the Algarve and Lisbon.
I fell in love with the country – and hoped to return, and to visit the Azores someday. But since the coronavirus pandemic, all overseas travel plans have been on indefinite hold.
As a pakeha New Zealander, I’m a product of one-way journeys undertaken by 19th century European settlers. Perhaps like them I’ll be in Aotearoa for the rest of my life? But it’s a good place to be…
Another great-great-grandfather, this one from Scotland, has also inspired a current musical project:
John Collie‘s poems ‘The Land of My Youth” and “The Emigrant’s Reflections” discuss a 19th century settler’s melancholy (or saudade?) upon leaving their European homeland forever:
“But, alas! those loved scenes I must leave now to others
For fate has decreed that I shall not remain
So adieu to the land of my youth and my fathers
To seek for a home o’er the wild foaming main.“
Likewise, many Portuguese fado songs are about sailors lost at sea, on a one-way journey beyond the horizon. Some of the lucky ones found their way to Aotearoa.
Portuguese make up only 0.02% of New Zealand’s population – but by coincidence, the Digitator also had a Portuguese ancestor, his from the Madeira islands. Hence Madeiras e Açores.
I salute anyone that makes a whole album out of EDM post-punk avant-garde rock / jazz, reggae, Balkan, [and] Portuguese music” – Corrinne Rutherford, www.muzic.net.nz
fiffdimension 
2 thoughts on “ilhas Atlânticas”