When you are on the road on holidays in a foreign country, maybe, it would be interesting to hear some music from that country.
Here I will introduce you to the Portuguese music bands I like. They are not national wide popular and I bet that if you ask people in the street they might not know those names. But people that have similar music taste as me will know them very well.
It’s interesting that there are some Portuguese music bands that are much more popular abroad than in Portugal. For example, when I was a teenager, I was overwhelmed by the Moonspell, a heavy metal band from Portugal. Yeah, yeah, those years I was into metal 🙂 It was a quite well known band abroad but not much in Portugal. Later, living in Porto, I attended their concert and it was as amazing as in the good old days 🙂
Noiserv
My first choice goes to the Noiserv. It’s a “one man band” lead by David Santos. He is a multi-instrumentalist singer and songwriter and Noiserv is known as one of the best alternative Portuguese music bands in the moment. I can’t deny that English singing also plays its role. And his songs are in the English language.
Frankie Chavez
Frankie Chavez is also a “one man band” and his music goes into the Blues / Folk / Roots category. He also sings in English.
Emmy Curl
Emmy Curl can be called an “one woman band”. A young singer and songwriter from the north of Portugal. I like her interesting voice and music explorations.
Traditional music
Portuguese are proud of fado – a music genre specifically from Portugal. Fado songs are nostalgic, a bit sad, mournful… In 2011 fado was added to UNESCO’s list of World’s Intangible Cultural Heritage. The “queen of fado”, and a true legend, was Amália Rodrigues.
Frankly, for me it’s interesting to listen to, but I’m not a fan of fado. That is, I couldn’t listen to a whole fado CD in one go.
After Wim Wender’s movie, Lisbon Story, a music band called Madredeus got popular worldwide. The band used a mix of fado, modern folk music. It had a very characteristic lead singer Teresa Salgueiro. She left the band in 2007.
Carlos Paredes was known as the “man with a thousand fingers”. He was a virtuoso Portuguese guitar player and composer. One of his most famous songs is Verdes Anos (“Tender Years”).
Is there any Portuguese musician or music band you would like to share?