Phoenix 24
The Paraíso Festival connects inherited memory with identities still being constructed.
BRAGA, PORTUGAL
Braga will host two days of music, cinema, gastronomy and public discussion during the 2026 Paraíso Festival, an event devoted to African and Afro-descendant cultures. Taking place on September 11 and 12, the programme is organised around the theme “Past and Future in Afro-Descendance.”
The festival’s main performance will bring the Cesária Évora Orchestra to the Theatro Circo. Formed by musicians who accompanied the celebrated Cape Verdean singer during concerts and studio recordings, the ensemble preserves her musical legacy while presenting it through contemporary voices. Elida Almeida, Lucibela and Ceuzany will perform alongside the orchestra, with composer Teófilo Chantre among the participating musicians.
The programme extends beyond the concert hall to the Centésima Página bookshop and the gnration cultural centre. Portuguese filmmaker Vanessa Fernandes will present Si Destino, followed by a conversation with academic and festival curator Ana Cristina Pereira, also known as Kitty Furtado. The discussion will examine how cinema represents migration, identity and the experience of belonging across different cultural spaces.
A second debate will introduce the forthcoming Anti-Racist Manual for the Arts and Education. Contributors Dori Nigro, Melissa Rodrigues and Raquel Lima, representing the União Negra das Artes, will explore how educational and cultural institutions can recognise racial inequality without reducing African heritage to symbolic celebration.
The presentation coincides with commemorations marking the centenary of Amílcar Cabral, the influential intellectual and independence leader associated with Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. His legacy gives the festival a political and historical dimension, connecting contemporary artistic expression with anti-colonial thought, language and collective emancipation.
Paraíso also forms part of the programme celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Community of Portuguese Language Countries. Braga’s festival therefore reflects a wider conversation within the Portuguese-speaking world about colonial memory, cultural exchange and the identities created by centuries of movement between Europe, Africa and the Americas.
Rather than presenting Afro-descendance as a fixed inheritance, the festival approaches it as a continuing process. Music preserves memory, cinema complicates familiar narratives and debate asks how institutions can participate in building a more inclusive cultural future.
Culture preserves memory while giving new generations the freedom to transform it.