Cristóvam, a musician, singer-songwriter, producer, and composer, was born on the island of Terceira and has always connected to music, even when he wasn’t thinking of becoming a professional musician. From his childhood memories, he remembers watching the Pink Floyd concert in Berlin with his father, “at the time it was on VHS tape, and we also watched other concerts. My father loved to watch concerts, which made me grow up with the music bug and later want to learn to play an instrument”.

He also tells us that there was a good friend of the family, “Peres, who used to play at the parties my parents organized, he played guitar and he played very well, I think that’s what made me want to get a guitar when I was 11,” he says, adding that “from then on, music gradually became part of my free time and by the age of 15/16 I was completely addicted to music.”

He started recording his models, and “I remember recording a demo – at the time MySpace was the place where musicians were ‘discovered’ – I put that demo on there, and I remember sending a message to Gomo, a Portuguese musician who was on MTV a lot, with the song ‘Feeling Alive’.”

The message he sent was to say, “I’d really like him to listen to my music. What advice could he give me? It would be incredible for me to learn from him.” In doing so, Cristóvam never thought he’d get a reply, but he did, and with it came the invitation to Lisbon. At the age of 16, Cristóvam went to Lisbon. At the time, “Gomo introduced me to some friends who were having coffee with ‘The Gift’ that day, and for me, it was something wonderful – nowadays you don’t think like that, but at the time we thought it would be impossible to reach those people – and when I came back, I remember thinking that there are things that are not impossible because I’ve seen, with my own eyes, that it is possible to reach these people.”

Asked what his family’s reaction was when he told them he wanted to be a professional musician, Cristóvam says that “it was very calm,” explaining that “my parents are people who have set up their own business and have taken to it with great enthusiasm. They were very supportive of my work, and it was great to have them support me right from the start.”

The musician says that the MySpace mock-ups made “my music reach Radio Clube de Angra. Then there was a party here on the island (Terceira), the Festas de São Carlos, where they invited me to play”. It was then that he discovered a studio on the island of Terceira, but it wasn’t cheap to record a song, so “as my parents had a sports store, we agreed to record the song in exchange for a bicycle,” he recalls. On this occasion, in 2008, October Flight appeared in a band that continued until 2016. However, the group broke up because some members no longer lived in Terceira. “I was living in Lisbon with André and João; the others were here on the island, and as music was something I had decided I wanted to do professionally,” the time had come to go solo.
His solo career wasn’t easy, but it had its ups and downs, which Cristóvam reveals. Before that, however, he stresses: “I tried and try every day to keep going because music is what gives me the most pleasure in life. It’s a privilege to be able to make music full time.”

In 2018, he released his first album ‘Hope and Dreams,’ and “in the same studio they were recording the RTP series ‘Os filhos do Rock’ and director Pedro Varela heard the song, asked who it was by, and after a month or so he called me, and that’s how ‘Walk in The Rain’ became part of the soundtrack for the movie ‘A Canção de Lisboa.’ This was the beginning of a “long journey working with him and other directors. It ended up being a starting point for this part of music that I really enjoy, which is also being part of soundtracks and writing scripts,” he said.

Cristóvam has played on various stages in Portugal and other countries such as France, Holland, Germany, Belgium, and Poland, accompanying artists such as Stu Larsen, Tim Hart, and Scott Matthews. It all started when he met the Australian Stu Larsen, who had come to Portugal to play two concerts, and his agent at the time, who “was the promoter of the show, asked his agent if I could do the first part of the concerts in Lisbon and Porto, and I did.” A friendship was born. Cristóvam says, “I was in Sardinia on vacation with my wife – his girlfriend at the time – and on my last day, I got a call from Stu Larsen asking if I was interested in doing the first part of his tour, and I said yes, but I would have to be in Paris in two weeks.” Cristóvam said yes but confesses that he was panicking because “I didn’t have the money to go to France, so I came to Portugal and sold my car,” he says, stressing that “I went into the unknown, I didn’t know what would happen. I could have lost my car and built nothing, but the truth is that it started to be the beginning of many good things for me. I was left without a car, but I lived a dream… a kid who comes from an island in the middle of the Atlantic, where everything seemed impossible, and suddenly I’m in Paris… it was great.”

However, when he returned to Portugal, he was shocked by reality because he went to a concert at FNAC in Porto, and “there was nobody there, just the lady in the café. It was tough, but I held on to the feeling of knowing what I wanted to do,” he said, adding that on that tour ‘I met Tim Hart who ended up becoming my producer for this latest album and the one I recorded this year, where I spent a month in Australia recording with Tim, and things came together funnily and unexpectedly, and now we’re here’.

His CV includes awards and recognition, but he says that “it’s never been something I’ve looked for, nor do I make music because of it,” acknowledging that at the start of his career, the competitions “were a way of combating the ‘insularity’ because I knew they were listening to my songs.” Still, he stresses that his main intention “was always to try to get my work heard, and in some cases, things have gone well. Of course, when you get this kind of validation, it’s a stimulus to keep going”.

Susete Rodrigues is a journalist for the Açoriano Oriental newspaper-Paula Gouveia, director.

Translated to English as a community outreach program from the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI) and the Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Department (MCLL) as part of Bruma Publication and ADMA (Azores-Diaspora Media Alliance) at California State University, Fresno, PBBI thanks the Luso-American Education Foundation for sponsoring FILAMENTOS.

Filamentos: editor’s note: We hope our BIG festas throughout California can bring Cistóvam to our Azorean Diaspora. He is multi-talented, sings in English, and can be a connection with the younger generations that are either very disconnected from the culture of the land of their forefathers or think that the music in Portugal is all about PIMBA (a form of pop music). Artists like Cristóvam would be a way to feature our amazing creativity in the Azores and work with schools and universities that teach Portuguese language and culture, a form of connecting with Today’s Portugal. Take a look at the video below.