In 2024, Portugal marked the 50th anniversary of the 25th of April Revolution and the end of thirteen years of colonial war, within a commemorative cycle that sparked conflicting reflections on historical memory, its present-day reverberations, and the challenges to democracy amid the rise of new and old far-right movements. Although the end of dictatorship and colonialism are historically interdependent, Portugal has long avoided confronting its colonial past and its cultural legacies. This critical refusal, reinforced by the reconfiguration of the lusotropicalist narrative, contributed to the invisibility of Black presence in Portugal and its political marginalisation. Beyond institutional rhetoric, alternative narratives have emerged—most notably through Black and Afro-Portuguese music—shaped as a space for questioning the place of racialised bodies in Portuguese society and culture. Drawing on ethnographic research, this presentation analyses a set of albums released between 2022 and 2025, highlighting how poetic uses of the past challenge hegemonic processes of remembrance. It argues that the inscription of political and cultural repertoires of anti-colonial struggles within these musical works—and their re-signification in light of present challenges—bring into play alternative chronologies of the 25th of April 1974, its preceding contexts, and its aftermath. This gesture, by complicating and de-nationalising the historical narrative, creates space for a renewal of political and emancipatory imaginaries, projecting a vision of a possible future through the sample, the word, the rhythm, and the dance.

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