Their debut CD aptly titled Tasca Beat (Tascas are akin to the tapas bars of Madrid, a watering hole where one can get food and chat with friends and family) is one of those CDs that you can play from one end to the other, without skipping a song. It’s the best way to experience OqueStrada’s cornucopia of sounds and rhythms, and to truly appreciate their music. It will sound intimately Portuguese, but at the same time you will notice rhythms most associated with Angola and Cape Verde, and you might unearth a ska track, a flamenco song in Spanish, and Miranda singing in Creole and French. Included below are two songs that capture the essence of OqueStrada beautifully. Oxalá te Veja and Se Esta Rua Fosse Minha are two passionate songs that will render you incapable of sitting still and will perhaps make you love the wonders of globalization and the clash of cultures.

PRESS QUOTES

In this debut there’s all that makes this multi-national band from Almada one of the best and most imaginative Portuguese projects since ages: the fado as the base idea but hundreds of other styles more – hip hop, ska, Brazilian music, waltz or morna, amongst many, always with delicious lyrics, pose and detours (Roberta Flack and Billy Idol included). António Pires, Time Out, 2009

Taken by the hand and voice of Miranda – perhaps Carmen as first name, admirable and chameleon-type of creature able to play different personalities at the same time – they invent, madly, in the space of just one song, tangos/musette, mornas/flamenco, balcanic fados and bossas/ska. They jump, without falling, from Portuguese to Creole, from this to Castilian, to English or French (returning to the start place). Over one second, they replace the Billy Idol mask for the Roberta Flack one and, like a philharmonic band on acid, Pablo, Lima, Zeto and Donatello dream up the precise thing the person who coined the term “world music̶.......
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