We had to do some kind of archaeological work to find the place in Invicta city that was the most special to David: it was at number 6 in Rua Dr. Artur Magalhães Basto that  Barbearia Porto, which has now disappeared, was located since the 1960s. David remembers going there with his father to get his hair cut as a child.

"When I was little I lived in Candal, just across the river. At the time, there were no shopping centres in Gaia; all my parents' shopping was done downtown, and one of my favourite things to do was to come here with my father to get my hair cut. I always had my hair cut by the same barber, one of those 'old-fashioned' ones, who told me lots of stories. I think I got the taste for going to the barber's because of my father, who used to bring me here religiously every month, and he would cut it and I would cut it. It's a shame it's closed." - But just a three-minute walk up Rua de Elísio de Melo, at the foot of the Ceuta Tunnel and overlooking the Aliados, we find one of Porto's oldest barbershops, Salão Veneza, where we are greeted with great friendliness by barber Pedro Almeida, a resident of Candal (no coincidence there!). Two customers were being attended to; they were father and son, Paulo and Luís, who (imagine that!) had come from Gaia on purpose to get a haircut. Or, as David Bruno would say, to spruce his hair.

Still on the subject of getting spruced in Porto, the musician nostalgically recalls the old Avenida dos Aliados garden, a favourite spot for parents to have their children's photos taken in the 1990s. "I have an eternal memory of the garden and the photos that parents used to take of their children there when they were little, especially during Carnival. I remember coming there and, from downstairs to the town hall, everything was full of parents with their little ones; the boys dressed as zorros, cowboys and policemen, and the girls in their dresses that we didn't quite know what they were; well, they were princesses."

Nando Manuel, the main character in David Bruno's new single, "SUPERXXXTILO", is no prince, but he sure likes to get spruced (check out the music video!). Just released, this is the lead track from his fourth solo album, Paradise Village (read "Paradise" in English and "Village" in French), which should be out in November.

"It's more of a regional work, dedicated to that land, and I did it to do it justice, because in 2020 I won the medal of cultural merit for Mafamude and Vilar do Paraíso, the Union of Parishes. The disaggregation [of parishes] has been approved, and I don't want to keep a medal that was given to me by one of the parties out of obligation. Firstly, that's it; and secondly, it's a bit of what I've already been doing, which is the archaeological work on the parishes where I'm going to live."

In 2023, he decided to stop playing solo and says he, therefore, "had a lot of time" to prepare this new album, which "is a tribute" to Vilar do Paraíso civil parish. "With 'SUPERXXXTILO', I've already released a video that I found on the YouTube channel of the former President of the Junta, Dr. Elísio Pinto; that's when I confirmed that Pedro Abrunhosa [portuguese musician] lived there and that he's taken famous musicians there. How many places in Portugal can say they've hosted Prince, Shakira and the Rolling Stones?", he says.

The not-so-last concert

It was in September that he gave "O Último Concerto" (The Last Concert) at Porto Coliseum, which, after all, wasn't the last, although, he guarantees, "it was meant to be". The musician was afraid of "starting to saturate" his audience. "I don't think that in my career I'll ever be someone who plays for the sake of playing. I didn't want to saturate people and I wanted to take a break."

"When it was the Coliseum concert I was a bit afraid. I feel that today music is consumed much more quickly than before. People listen to it for a few months and then get bored of it - except for older people, and I'm lucky enough to have some of that audience, who listen to an album from I don't know how many years ago, and like you and remember you forever," he says.

The musician was also about to release Conjunto Corona's new album, ESTILVS MISTICVS, in October and felt that Portugal "is too small" for so many simultaneous projects because "they don't all play, only one does". "Up until now, I'd also been competing with myself, which was really stupid. I had I don't know how many albums, I don't know how many bands on the market at the same time, and I was going to play concerts with everyone," he says, emphasising that "you have to give your work time to live and breathe".

"I'm a prepared repentista"

We asked him if he's a repentista and given to improvisation when it comes to lyrics. He replies that he is "a prepared repentista". "What do I mean? When I'm making music, I spend a lot of time thinking about it without making it concrete; I take lots of notes, I think... One thing I do a lot is talk to myself at home. I talk to myself a lot, out loud. Often I'm putting my ideas together, you know? And I take notes and let it pass. The next day I come back to it."

It's the same with the music he makes, which is essentially based on samples. "Before I compose, I just put the samples together and I have an idea, but I don't go smashing it out straight away. And then, when the time comes that I have my things together, and I think it's time to start creating, then I am indeed a repentista, but only because I've been thinking about it for a long time without [realising it]."

Before thinking about lyrics or music, David says he thinks about the "big picture, the style" he wants to imprint on his artistic project. "Then come the musical references that I think fit the spirit [of the story] I want to tell, because I don't really have a defined musical style. I listen to songs and start gathering samples within that style, and I start putting together little mock-ups; then I start thinking about lyrics that fit into that universe, until the day I sit down to write and it comes out quickly [because of all the work behind it]."

“Places write the lyrics, not me”

Fascinated by places and people, this storyteller is more interested in internal landscapes than external ones: "I don't think I've ever visited a place because of the landscapes, what I always bring back are people's stories. I like people. I like talking to people. And I like places and understanding people's culture."

All his songs are stories that focus, in large part, on what we call "Portuguese popular culture" or "portugality", and which the younger generations are trying, in some way, to recover and valorise. "I think there's a generational gap in this portugality thing, or whatever you want to call it. Our grandparents have always been 'very Portuguese'. And despite all the changes, they continued to have 'very Portuguese habits'. That changed a little with my parents' generation, I think... With the flee of people from the villages to the cities, accents were lost, they made a point of losing the accents of the places they came from, and everyone wanted to modernise. But now the new generation is beginning to appreciate and reacquire these habits, and are once again attending to a certain type of restaurant, for example, and are proud to be Portuguese."

The musician that shone a spotlight on Gaia and piqued curiosity in Lisbon

"The phenomenon I find most amusing about my music is that people from Lisbon find the accent and the places I describe very exotic. This audience has an idea that sometimes doesn't correspond at all to the reality [that I'm portraying], but that's a good thing, this is art, it's open to interpretation," he emphasises, adding that "it's very interesting to see people from Lisbon who have a very exotic idea of what Gaia could be thanks to my music."

And if there are those who say that the suburbs are "the worst invention of mankind", for David Bruno living there is being in his element. "The suburbs are like mutts: a process of many years of the law of the strongest, in which many things have happened there, many different people have moved there. There are many people who move to that kind of environment, don't adapt and leave; there are others who get used to it. There are people who were already there, who were farmers, and they don't mind [the arrival of new residents]. There are people who open factories in the middle of it - in Gaia you can even build a factory next to a potato field... It's this mix, this melting pot, that I find very interesting."