David Ferreira: “Fausto was surprised by feeling surprised by others, by the books he read, by the changing times”

Fausto was one of the greatest song writers I have ever heard. It’s true that the radio has been forgetting about him – but these songs are there, for anyone who wants to hear where the music is; and where deafness sends.

Fausto belonged to a kind of generation in which he was the youngest of all. Almost twenty years younger than the oldest, José Afonso, who invited him to be the musical director of several albums he recorded after the 25th of April. Or than Adriano Correia de Oliveira, for whom he produced the last two albums. Or than José Mário Branco, who admired him as a guitarist and song writer. Or than Vitorino, in whose first album he had a prominent role. Or than LuÃs CÃlia, who invited him for two albums. Or even what Sérgio Godinho, to whom he offered a great success, “Datingâ€your song for a poem by Viriato da Cruz.

Fausto set several poets to music, having the gift of convincing us that their words, so musical and adjusted, had been written on purpose for their songs: Reinaldo Ferreira (“Rosie†), Eugénio de Andrade (“I Don’t Sing Because I Dream†), Daniel Filipe (“Letter from Paris†), Ernesto Lara Filho (“O Tempo dos Marimbondos†) or the aforementioned Viriato da Cruz.

He sang about the journeys of the Portuguese, giving a musical interpretation to classic texts such as the “Peregrinação†, by Fernão Mendes Pinto, and the “Tragic-Maritime History†a. He was a lucid and unaligned observer of the “Times” who lived, singing a Europe that was both exciting and trapped by the market and Americanization; or pollution, visible on the beaches; or the relatively new realities of financial speculation. And she sang of love, in an always original register: for women with low laughwhich give rise to an inexplicable weakwhich make it pass raisins from the Algarvethat say obscene wonders – o by loitering on the asphalt, crossing other sea bridges that are rivers.

Fausto was often surprised by feeling surprised by others, by the books he read, by the “Times†that changed and forced him not to blindly insist on old faiths. He realized before those who shared his ideals the reality of Angolan kleptocracy.

Others recognized his talent and the solidity of his musical preparation. In his collaborations on confreres’ albums, we hear him several times, an excellent viola player; but also, here and there, a percussionist or collecting traditional music songs for Adriano to record. This multiplicity of resources made him as at home in an African context as in the lands of Portuguese folklore. He lived as a teenager in Angola and liked to say that he was born on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean. But these two musical homelands that he knew well never stopped him from exploring a different sea, which belonged only to him.

I now lack the time and lines to make this note, written hot, a little less painful. Especially because Faust’s songs, dense, inspired and unexpected, deserve all our time – to hear them more; it is better.