How to be a Portuguese hip-hop star

Practise the following and repeat often with plenty of "yeeeeeeeaaaaaaah"s:

• "Como que e *insert name of town here* ?!"
• "Todas as gentes, y'all"
• "Mesmo sim, mesmo sim"

Not the usual Monday night on a school week but we headed out to see one of Portugal's hippest and hottest bands. But even a gig can involve a gastronomic experience and since the gig was at the Borba Wine Fair food and wine was definitely involved. One of the dual marquees set up for the fair was filled with temporary restaurants, with the local restaurateurs keen to show off their wares despite the make-shifts facilities and stall after stall of cakes, pastries, sausages, jams and cheeses. And this is before we got to the wine stands.

Whenever I go to fairs/festas here I end up comparing them to the country shows back home. One reason is they have the same role in the community, and in a lot of ways the towns here are just as isolated as some towns in Australia. One difference - instead of being able to taste every wine at each stand you have to ask to taste or show some interest, plus its generally accepted that if you taste one you'll buy it. Not necessarily a problem when the wine is as good as it is (Borba being one of the wine capitals of Portugal) but it is a lot better for the tight-arses at an Aussie wine show.

And to the band, finally and drunkenly (can I just mention cherry liquer in a chocolate cup before we get to the band? Thank you!). Expensive Soul are one of Portugal's hottest hip-hop/funk/soul bands and have already had a song on MTV plus one of the local soaps. They were good actually - live instruments, lyrics and rappers about respect and having fun not gang-banging - and settled into a groove despite the crowd probably having eaten too much to really jump around. Even the parents and the old men moved out from the bar to see what all the kids were listening to. This made it easier for the kids to sneak some drinks in but they know their booze in Borba - the 16 year old I saw had a bottle of local port hidden in his hoodie.

At encore the band wandered back on stage and announced that "this is now our party", bottle in hand in true rock star fashion. But being Borba the bottle was red wine. Another part of the party was inviting everyone up on stage - meaning every 10 year old tired of jumping around in the dark could now jump around and pull faces at their friends in the spotlights. Again I thought back to Australia - no country show I went to ever had an original band, let alone one which had had airplay or a national profile. And certainly there was no chance of kids getting to live out a dream by jumping on stage and pretending to be a star.

Photos by JB