"O Rapaz da Montanha" ( The boy from the mountain)is the song that anticipates Rodrigo Leão's upcoming album, which will follow on from "Piano para Piano", released in 2023.
In this new record, the Portuguese composer explores the music that marked him in his early teens, in the first half of the 1970s, when artists such as José Mário Branco, José Afonso or Sérgio Godinho gave voice to an idea of freedom that had yet to be fulfilled. In the company of his usual band and with guitarist José Peixoto as a special guest (a musician he had already crossed paths with in Madredeus), Rodrigo Leão searches for echoes of these formative memories in his new compositions, calling on unusual elements in his discography for the arrangements of his pieces, such as the more pronounced percussions, which refer to his very own idea of popular music, certainly filtered through his personal experience.
In Ana Vieira's voice - and in the choir formed from the band and people close to Rodrigo Leão - the words of Carolina Quadros e Costa resound, telling us the story of a boy who climbs a mountain - perhaps the mountain of life - in search of something new that the future promises, trying to escape from the same gear that José Mário sang about in the 1972 classic "Margem de Certa Maneira". Carolina, Rodrigo Leão's frequent lyricist, tapped into her own memories when writing these words, but only after the song was finished did she realise the connection between this boy's journey and the words that José Mário Branco made into a song over half a century ago.
Rodrigo Leão sees this song - and his next album, the title of which he is still keeping - as a new chapter in the adventure he likes to call "Os Portugueses" (The Portuguese), songs in which he rehearses different approaches to the Portuguese language: "but there's a different tone, the arrangements are new, the inspiration comes from somewhere else," the composer warns.
So there's a journey to undertake, a mountain to climb. And a new song by Rodrigo Leão that comes with a story to tell