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Antonio Zambujo

There is right side and there is a flip side. Heads and tails. The Yin and the Yang. Then, happily for all of us, there are those who, through talent and conviction, merit and hard work, succeed in showing us that the world is not all black and white but is, in fact, many-coloured, multiply shaded and diversely hued and that bridges and syntheses are both possible and desirable. António Zambujo has earned a special place amongst this group of architects, always refusing – by dint of instinct, belief and artistic necessity – to remain confined to a single style, a school, a genre. At his own pace, he has crafted a sweeping heritage that is all his own; one that, like Do Avesso, reaffirms in full, works in open space, without narrow compartments, and with total, natural communication between all corners of the house. Just note, for example, the new songs that have led the singer to bring in an orchestra, the Lisbon Sinfonietta, and those others where he is accompanied by a single instrument, be it the piano or the acoustic guitar. One of the healthily distinctive features of this path, which is only superficially paradoxical, is thus revealed – the more he diversifies his targets of interest, the more he erases the boundaries of stereotypes and of formats, the more António Zambujo establishes his musical personality, which is so much more than just his voice, itself unmistakeable.

To see this, just consider some of the details of the record that once again brings us directly into the orbit of António Zambujo. Let's begin with the choice of repertoire, a sure indicator of the transversality of interests and motivations: if the singer brings his composer “side” to the fore on three of the tracks, one feels like saying that the companion songwriters that he called in are, as they might say across the water, a “pure luxury”. In alphabetical order and just from Portugal: Aldina Duarte, João Monge, Jorge Benvinda, Luísa Sobral, Márcia, Mário Laginha, Miguel Araújo, Paulo Abreu Lima and Pedro Silva Martins. At the very least, this looks like a list of nominees for a kind of “Portuguese national team”. Some are working with António Zambujo for the first time whilst others are riding long-term collaborations and partnerships. Some of these figures should, without exaggeration, be considered seminal shapers of various “regions” of the music being made in Portugal. It is certainly worth thinking about how they have come together, without being forced or hurried to do so. And there is more: the singer’s passion for Brazil – also evident in a record entirely dedicated to Chico Barque, Até Pensei Que Fosse Minha (I Even Thought It Was Mine) – is quite clear on three fronts, each of which involves different generations and approaches: Rodrigo Maranhão, who is back again, and the duos Arnaldo Antunes/Cézar Mendes and Fernando Brant/Milton Nascimento. This is by no means the only “classic” presence, as a new lease of life has been given to a timeless near century-old track from José Maria Lacalle, (a Spaniard from Cadiz, who later settled in the United States): Amapola. The song, here sounding completely different from the instrumental version immortalised in the Ennio Morricone soundtrack to the film Once Upon A Time In America, was first released in 1920. Lastly, there is one more reunion, in the form of a tune written by the Uruguayan Jorge Drexler and the first song in Spanish to earn a Hollywood Oscar. With his usual “generosity”, which touches all 14 of the songs on the album, António Zambujo has wrought a mosaic in which the surprises and “acknowledgements” unfold smoothly into a construction of the highest harmony.

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