From an apartment on the busy avenue of Rua do Campo to performing with industry greats on thousands of stages all around the world, the musical journey of João Caetano has been quite remarkable. As he prepares to launch his latest EP this month, João chats with CLOSER and reflects on his impressive career so far.
“I'm ready to be where I am and to go to this next step of my career,” says João Caetano, as he discusses the two exciting projects that he is currently working on: a new four-track EP, collaborating with renowned Portuguese fashion designer Alexandra Moura on the music videos; and a project still in the works and set to be unveiled next year, working with Rui Veloso, often referred to as the father of Portuguese Rock music.
“I have now surrounded myself with the A-list of the Portuguese music industry, and the fact that these people are coming to my concerts and championing me is huge. It means so much more to me than any number of records I end up selling,” João notes.
At just 33 years of age, João’s career still has a long way to go, but he has already worked with some of the biggest talents in the music industry. In particular, he has been a permanent member of the world-famous British Jazz-Funk ensemble Incognito for 11 years, becoming the youngest talent to join the group when he was invited to play with them at just 22 years of age.
Not bad for a kid who hadn’t even really listened to any blues or jazz music when he left Macau in 2007 to pursue his music career in London.
“The funny thing is, I didn’t have much exposure to American music culture when I was in Macau, because I was exposed to mainly Portuguese music and classical music. I didn’t have that whole story of the Blues and Jazz and the artists who have influenced music, I didn’t know any of that,” he admits.
What he did have were very supportive parents who fully encouraged him to pursue his passion for music, and an eclectic influence of rhythmic beats floating through the air of his neighbourhood.
“I’ve played percussion ever since I can remember, and a big motivator for this was the Chinese lion dances at Chinese New Year, as well as the Dragonboat races. Culturally, I was heavily influenced by a very diverse background and these Chinese cultural rituals. I used to live near McDonald’s on Rua do Campo and they would rehearse for the lion dances on top of the building behind my house, so those rhythms were always entering my very absorbent young brain.”
Formally, João started learning violin at the age of four, a classical background that would influence his respect for traditional forms of music later in life. He picked up the guitar at around 14. While neither of his parents played music, they were both music lovers and he remembers always having instruments around the house and being encouraged by them to make as much noise as he pleased.
“Many musicians today tell me that I have a natural gift, and I have to thank my parents for being so patient and always allowing me to experiment,” he says.
In the early days, João was mentored by the PE teacher at the Portuguese School, João Fonseca, who was also the director and president of the Macau Portuguese Folk Dance Association, and who helped him to establish a percussion troupe at the school, Sepium, who became regular performers at many cultural festivals around town.
“This man, who I still love and am still in contact with (he just recently came to my concert in Spain) and his wife Maria José, were instrumental for me to learn things such as leadership, how to run a group, how to rehearse. Sepium was basically just a group of 12 to 15 students from the age of around 8 to 17, and that was a big part of my school life.”
João continues to feel a strong connection to the school. He even wrote a song for the anniversary of the school in 2018, entitled Caravela.
“When I come back to Macau, I go to the school and give workshops. I talk to the young students there and I basically say to them, you can achieve anything that you put your mind to, you can literally achieve anything you want as long as you work hard. And I am proof of that, because I come from a non-musical family in a town that had no connections to any music school. I didn’t know anyone in the music industry, any musical director, any artist.”
Fortuitous Meetings
Despite his lack of contacts in the industry, at the age of 18, João left the comfort of his safe home in Macau and embarked on an adventurous journey to try to make it big in the music scene in the UK, once again encouraged by his parents. While studying music at the University of Chichester, he saved every dollar he could in order to travel to London regularly for jam sessions with other musicians.
“I would to go to Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club for jam sessions. We had a jam session that we started at that point in 2008 – 2009 and that is now the resident funk band at Ronnie Scott’s that plays once a month.”
João also joined a band and played in pubs in the south of London every week, and it was at this time that he realised he could actually make some money from his passion.
“I was making money while I was studying and that made me realise OK, I can actually live from playing music,” he recalls.
It was during his time playing with this band that he met his first really big name in the industry, drummer Pete Ray Biggin, who has played with the likes of Chaka Khan, Robbie Williams, Amy Winehouse and Adele.
“He was the first guy I met from the music scene in London who was a big deal. This was the guy who I basically wanted to be at that point. He really believed in my talent and he pushed me to come to London and meet other people in the industry, and it was through him that I met the band leader for Incognito Jean-Paul 'Bluey' Maunick, who has been one of the godfathers of my musical journey so far,” João comments.
From that introduction, João got his first big break, eventually joining Incognito, and going on to record seven albums and complete nine world tours with the band, playing on some of the biggest stages and at some of the most popular music festivals, including the recent 65th edition of the Monterrey Jazz Festival in September this year.
“All of the art of music production I learned from being in the studio with Bluey. I basically lived in the studio with him for the first four years. I would eat and sleep there from the age of 21 to 25, I would be around Bluey and Mo Brandis every day learning, seeing this chemistry and the process of recording and how to get the best performance out of the musicians and how to conceptualise things, live sessions with everyone or recording everyone separately. I didn’t learn that at university. These are things that I was taught on the road.”
Reinventing tradition
João has taken all these lessons and skills to pursue his own solo career in recent years. His solo music is characterised by a reinvention of traditional Portuguese Roots and Fado and the use of traditional Portuguese instruments, adding a new and fresh perspective that incorporates the Bombos de Lavacolhos (a large traditional drum), Portuguese guitar and accordion. In 2019 he performed tracks from his self-titled 2016 EP and debut solo album Rhythm & Fado to a sold-out crowd at Ronnie Scott’s and as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival in London.
Starting this month, he is releasing his latest four-track EP and music videos in a series conceived with Portuguese director Arlindo Camacho and co-produced by Macau Records and AudioMatrix.
“My new EP is four songs, four videos, and each song is a scene, like a painting,” he explains. “Each music video is curated by the biggest fashion designer in Portugal Alexandra Moura, and she basically created all of the look for me and the musicians that are in the videos,” João enthuses.
“So it’s visually something that is fresh and modern, but the content of the music is very much old school. I love tradition. I love old things from folkloric chants, to compositions. I love Tango, Fado, Jazz, Blues. All of that is what the music content is about, but then with a very modern take for the visuals, and that has always been my goal in life, to bring the tradition of what I do, respecting what came before me and adding a contemporary take.”
The first track on the EP is a tango-inspired song featuring the Bandoneon, which was the instrument that Astor Piazzolla played, seen by many as the greatest exporter of Tango. The lyrics for the first three tracks are poems written by renowned poet and lyricist Paulo Abreu Lima. And the fourth track is traditional Fado, but performed with only drums and vocals, no melodic instruments.
“In my solo career I’m trying to explore what rhythm is, and how to put it into instrumentations. I still very proudly wave the flag of my roots in the Portuguese language and Portuguese folkloric culture that I learned in Macau.”
Key to this exploration of his roots has been his use of poems by the late Paulo Abreu Lima, and recent collaboration with Portuguese musician Rui Veloso.
“In my opinion, Paulo is the most important poet of modern Portugal in the last 100 years. He wrote for literally everyone in the Portuguese music scene. And I was lucky enough that he really loved my music before I met him. He was already very much invested in who I was as a musician. He passed away of cancer last year, but before that he often recommended me to Rui Veloso.”
For the past months, João has been working closely with Veloso, with plans to release some collaborative material in 2023/24, although the details are still to be unveiled.
“Rui Veloso called me and invited me to his house and we’ve basically spent the best part of a month just going through all of these demos. I’ve had access to literally every demo from his career. Original demos of his biggest records from his biggest hits and everything. It’s been very surreal because when I was a kid his CDs lived inside our player at home,” remembers João. “In this business it can be a very blurred line between your family life and your business life, because the people you work with can become like your family.”
“I’ve always been fortunate to meet great people. If you work hard enough on your career, you’re going to find yourself surrounded by the right people. You just need to allow time to do its thing,” he concludes.
Reminiscing on his life in Macau and where it has led him, João has some important points he wants to share with our readers:
“Macau really taught me the importance of being loyal and dedicated and true to the people that have helped me along the way. I still have those values. Obviously not just the city itself, the people who live in the city, my family, and the whole society and culture, it's a big part of who I am. It was was all taught to me in Macau. And today I think that a very important thing is to keep Macau alive as an international city for all sorts of nationalities and people from around the world. The communities that exist there are not large, but it's important to keep this multicultural exchange happening. Without that you don't have the melting pot, you don't have the exchange of experiences and culture and it's important that this be preserved and cultivated. Many people from Macau are doing things outside and it's important that we can come back and help and tell stories and cultivate this.”
