When Primeira Dama (Manuel Lourenço) “sends everyone to hell without exception” in “A revolta” a fabulous elevation takes place around it. As if the beautiful ornament of a song of pain wanted to dismantle itself for a moment and, approaching that realization, it falls, returns to the kind of fantastic charm that involves all the themes of “Em Terra Alheia Sei Onde Ficar”. Album with many invited people (Luís Cunha, Bernardo Tinoco, João Pedro Coelho, João Pereira, Ricardo Marques, Francisco Brito, João Firmino, Marta Garrett, Mariana Dionísio and Primeira Dama), João Espadinha opened the doors to musicians and friends, friends and musicians or friends-musicians to enter in the songs he composed and play with him this jazz game.

Live, João Espadinha knew how to let the album grow and expand. One of those things that arise out of necessity, in an album with so many guests, it became difficult to have everyone present at the concerts to sing the songs that the guitarist wrote. Primeira Dama went from guest, to continuous guest, to Espadinha’s partner on the journeys of “Em Terra Alheia Sei Onde Ficar”. With time he started to take steps beyond the songs he sings on the album (“A revolta” and “Tempos Curtos”) and to move on to those of others and even other songs by the guitarist.

The regularity on the road and the combination between the two musicians led them to embrace this as a duo project, in which the starting point will always be João Espadinha’s songs and the rest will come as a result of the moment and the spaces that life invites them to: be it songs from Primeira Dama, versions or even new themes that the two have been composing. This is how “Em Terra Alheia Sei Onde Ficar” has been travelling, with the title becoming concrete in the execution. Going back to “A revolta”, Primeira Dama also sings “all the wine you drink today is the same” before the unannounced revolt: this, the difference, the surprise, the non-equal, happens with João Espadinha and Manuel Lourenço on stage. AS

Swilaw is ‘close to finding herself, but far from knowing who she is’, as the Lisbon songwriter puts it in her songs.

With a degree in Musical Sciences from Universidade Nova de Lisboa, since she was 16, Raquel Andrade has been singing, playing guitar and writing songs with a range of influences that travel between bossa nova, rnb, indie pop, and neo-soul.

In 2020, she released her first original song in duet with Janeiro in the album Sem Tempo. Since then she has been performing live in intimate venues such as Insitu, Fábrica do Braço de Prata, and festivals such as Poetry Festival of Lisbon and Krusty Calls London.

In the word she finds expression and in her voice she brings us the sweetness of a calmness that her heart doesn’t have.

While preparing his first EP, Swilaw presents us her unreleased originals in an intimate format.