Deep in the Atlantic Ocean, an underground music scene bubbles

On the docks of a small fishing village on São Miguel’s north coast, the largest island of the Portuguese Azores archipelago, around 50 musicians take to the stage. They’re all wearing hooded capes, with each responsible for a different part – a drum, synthesiser, microphone or stringed instrument.

Standing in front of them, Ricardo Baptista begins to wave his arms frantically, and the music begins. It’s deep, rolling and groovy, as electronic synths and complex syncopated percussion underline chanted folk vocals, with long build ups and releases that are reminiscent of African Head Charge’s ’80s dub psychedelia.

One song reflects on life in Rabo de Peixe, the village where the crowd of a few hundred have gathered to see the gig. “There was a song about a curse, which was a very important metaphor about being bold enough to go to places and meet people that we wouldn’t meet otherwise,” Baptista explains afterwards. “Until the 1974 revolution, people from the lower side of the village couldn’t go to the upside if they were alone. So this metaphorical curse existed, and we met with someone from the lower side who was the first person to marry someone from the upside in the ’80s.”

On top of engagement with local music and stories, there’s something different about the set. As each track finishes, instead of clapping to create audible applause, the crowd wave their hands in the air to show their appreciation. The act is Som Sim Zero, a collaboration between the Guimarães-based ondamarela art collective, the São Miguel Deaf Association, and local folk and percussion groups. Since 2017, the Deaf Association and ondamarela have been joining forces to create bespoke concerts for Tremor Festival – an experimental music festival set on the island.

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With over 1,000 attendees, mostly coming from mainland Portugal, the festival is an annual chance for the São Miguel Deaf Association’s members to perform live music, on an island where such opportunities are few and far between. And it’s taken them beyond, too, performing a Som Sim Zero set at Lisbon’s Rock in Rio festival in 2023.

Across Tremor’s five days, there are international acts who have flown hundreds of miles over the Atlantic Ocean to reach the Azores. They include Clarissa Connelly showing off her hauntingly beautiful vocal range in a university auditorium, alongside Ugandan underground music collective Nyege Nyege affiliate KABEAUSHÉ, whose energetic club music starts a moshpit in a nightclub room converted from a harbour warehouse.

It’s a beautiful island, blanketed with luscious greenery and volcanic landscapes, with the sea rarely being further than stone’s throw away. The island is an important character of the festival, and exploring its different areas is part of the experience. There are secret concerts in different locations away from the main city Ponta Delgada, featuring the likes of jazz-pop trio The Zenmenn on a gardened estate and Glasgow queer punk duo Comfort in a tobacco storage farm, as well as a ‘hike’ in a botanical garden.

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Yet despite the international draw, Tremor’s standout moments come from local Azorean artists. On Friday night, a loose collective of local rappers come together as Filhos do Vento. Rapping in Portuguese, the group move between moments of hands-in-the-air hype, ’90s hip-hop knee benders and moments of deeper introspection.

It’s a slick performance that one would imagine of a longtime rap collective. But in reality, the group are anything but a well-oiled crew. Like Som Sim Zero, Filhos do Vento first came together for the 2017 edition of Tremor, as part of a Red Bull documentary exploring the island’s hip-hop scene. But outside of the festival, its rappers spend the majority of their time siloed off into their disparate corners on São Miguel, with few venues and opportunities to perform.

Part of the island’s beauty lies in its remoteness and ruggedness, but it’s exactly that draw for tourists to the Azores that forms barriers to a thriving scene. Little musical infrastructure exists, while public transport around the island is scarce to borderline non-existent, making it incredibly difficult for people to collaborate, and share music and resources.

“We need to solve lots of problems,” explains Valério AZ, a veteran rapper of the local hip-hop scene, who performed as part of Filhos do Vento. “First is the public transportation – it affects the way that people collaborate here. Even if it’s just 10km away, buses only come one every two or three hours and there’s no bus on Sunday – it shifts the mentality of the way you see distance, and it makes people more isolated even though it’s a small island.”

With its size and population – São Miguel has around 140,000 people dotted around the island – many young people dream of life on the mainland, in the big city. It means that there is a constant brain, and creativity, drain. “People usually leave the Azores, and even if they stay here, they can’t make money out of the music because there is no music industry,” he says. “The islands are too small, and most people don’t have the time or financial means to do it. Those who keep doing it as a hobby don’t really share it because it’s not on a professional level – like their recordings don’t get mastered.”

Beyond limited recording capabilities, there aren’t many spaces for musicians to cut their teeth performing live, or test out new materials. São Miguel lacks established venues and nightclubs, though seeds are being sown. “Lately, there was one bar that opened up in Ponta Delgada that does weekly jams,” Valério continues. “But other than that, there aren’t really places to show your heart. With Tremor, it’s good that a lot of people come by, and I can showcase my music on my island to people that don’t live here.”

On the final afternoon of the festival, in a small art gallery on the island’s west coast, around 50 people gather to watch Valério take to the microphone on his own as part of a local community radio and project Rádio Vaivém takeover. It’s a change of pace to the Filhos do Vento set, with audience members sitting on cushions rather than shaking their hips on the dancefloor, and the rapper takes them through another side to his sound – more downtempo, melodic and brooding.

Before him, a young singer-songwriter from nearby Terceira Island named Canto performs with just an acoustic guitar and a microphone. There’s soft folk-pop songs sung in English, before switching up to her native Portuguese. It’s a milestone gig for the 24-year-old, despite having recorded music for over a decade. “It was my first time singing my originals, so I was really nervous,” she explains afterwards. “I started posting covers online in 2014 – doing things online felt like the only way to do things.”

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Things changed last August, when she was invited to play at Mercado Negro – a small bar and café in the centre of Ponta Delgada. In attendance was Bruno Moreira – a co-founder Rádio Vaivém along with Tremor’s artistic director Luís Banrezes Kitas – who invited Canto to take part in a residency programme. “It was just me and Bruno, and I showed him all of my original materials and raw melodies, and he was like: ‘Okay, we’re going to turn them into songs,’” she recalls. “And we turned them into something real – these are the songs I presented today.”

Seeing early signs of a scene blossoming has given her the belief that there are local, offline opportunities. “I think seeing these things happen in the last couple of years was what made me want to come out of my shell,” she says. “There’s festivals like Tremor and residencies, and my friend has a collective where people get together and make music. And seeing this artistic community start to grow – there’s bars and cafés where people are like: ‘I’ll teach you how to DJ and you teach me how to play music.’ Surrounding myself with these people has made me realise that there are things around me.”

Changes have not gone unnoticed for Valério either. “I can see some progress in terms of the hip-hop community,” he says. “People are going to each other’s houses and doing more stuff. But we still don’t have collaborative spaces. There are no youth clubs, or cultural and community spaces for artists.”

It’s what he, and the rest of the Azorean scene, hope to build from the ground up. “Hopefully in the future, if not exporting musicians worldwide, I want them to create in the island – to have a space to create,” he continues. “We have so many talented musicians, no matter what the genre is. Think of [legendary Cuban collective] Buena Vista Social Club; before they did the documentary in ’99, people didn’t know about them, and they were doing music for the sake of it. So maybe in 10 years, we can be ready for when a documentary pops up, so we can show the world our really world-class musicians – that’s my dream.”

For more information on Tremor Festival and tickets to the 2026 edition, visit its official website.

Isaac Muk is Huck’s digital editor. Follow him on Bluesky.

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