In “Amor Ausente,” Sara Miguel and Mar&Ilha turn toward the women who waited while the whaleboats went to sea. As the Azorean group celebrates seven years, performs across the islands and prepares to return to mainland Portugal for FÓLIO, its music is increasingly becoming a meeting place between memory, literature and the contemporary Azores.

Whaling history is filled with departures. Men ran toward the sea when the lookout gave the signal, boats were launched, oars entered the water, and families watched the horizon until the boats returned. But every departure also left someone behind. With its new music video, “Amor Ausente,” Mar&Ilha turns the story around and looks toward those who remained on shore—the women who lived with fear, absence and uncertainty while keeping families and communities functioning. For vocalist Sara Miguel, they were, in their own way, the “whalers on land.”

The song grew from another Mar&Ilha recording, “Sete Marés,” written for the group by Zeca Medeiros. Its atmosphere of saudade remained with Miguel and eventually inspired her to imagine a descendant of the woman in that earlier song enduring the same ancient island experience: waiting for someone who went to sea and did not return. She also wanted to add another female voice to a musical and literary landscape that, as she notes, remains predominantly male. “Amor Ausente” consequently became more than a song about absence. It became a way of looking at the sea through the eyes of those for whom it represented both sustenance and danger—“an opportunity, but also a limit.”

That perspective shaped the video, directed by Diogo Rola and produced by Mar&Ilha with Filipe Fernandes of Whaleboat Tales, with support from the Municipality of Lajes do Pico. Although the work lasts less than five minutes and is not intended as a documentary, the creators researched real experiences, found period clothing and sought locations capable of evoking Pico nearly a century ago. Members of the community appear in the film, including women, men and surviving whalers. But the camera deliberately lingers on the women. Miguel wanted to honor those who, she says, “never left” and nevertheless “kept the boat afloat on land”—women who often carried two histories simultaneously: “the one the men told and the one they lived without telling.”

That relationship between artistic creation and place has defined Mar&Ilha since its beginning seven years ago. The group—Sara Miguel on vocals, Jorge Canarinho on viola da terra and Manú Teixeira on percussion—does not attempt to reproduce traditional music unchanged. Instead, its music absorbs different stylistic influences while retaining what Miguel calls the nuances of “the place that welcomes us.” The viola da terra immediately anchors its sound in an island musical imagination, while collaborations with Azorean writers and the use of whaleboats, Pico wine cellars, local crafts, Holy Spirit melodies and other cultural references allow geography and history to inhabit the group’s contemporary language.

The timing of “Amor Ausente” has acquired additional symbolism. Shortly after filming was completed, Mar&Ilha learned that the knowledge associated with handling and building the Azorean whaleboat had been entered in Portugal’s National Inventory of Intangible Cultural Heritage. For Miguel, the whaleboat is a particularly powerful example of heritage transformed rather than embalmed: an object once associated with hunting whales now survives through sailing and rowing regattas, craftsmanship, memory and cultural celebration. The new video becomes part of that continuing transformation, while insisting that the emotional history surrounding the boats must include those who watched them disappear toward the horizon.

October will place that dialogue before several audiences. Mar&Ilha performs October 3 at the inaugural LUME Festival in Lajes do Pico; on October 4 it publicly premieres “Amor Ausente” at the Museu dos Baleeiros as part of the opening of the Whaleboat Summit 2026, followed by a conversation about women and whaling and a musical showcase. On October 5, the group crosses the channel to present Cordas Primas at Teatro Faialense. Then, on October 15, it returns to mainland Portugal to perform at FOLIA INATEL as part of FÓLIO – International Literary Festival of Óbidos.

That mainland presence reflects how much has changed since Mar&Ilha received the national Frequência 440 distinction in 2025, awarded by Fundação INATEL to projects engaged in reinventing roots music. After making its mainland debut at Lisbon’s Teatro da Trindade INATEL in March, the group expects to finish 2026 having performed as often on the mainland as in the islands—something Miguel says would have seemed unimaginable only a year earlier. After seven years of independent work, personnel changes, a pandemic and the particular difficulties of creating art “on a non-central island of a peripheral region,” she believes Mar&Ilha has finally found a solid core and a clearer route forward.

And perhaps “Amor Ausente” explains that route better than any manifesto could. Mar&Ilha is not interested in preserving Azorean culture by placing it behind glass. It searches the past for voices that can still speak to the present—especially voices that history has allowed to become faint.

The whaleboat went to sea. The men became part of the legend. But on shore, women waited, worked, raised families, endured fear and kept entire communities alive.

Mar&Ilha is asking us to hear their side of the ocean too.

Based on an interview published in Diário Inuslar-José Lourenço-director-The phtos are from DI.