Things changed last August, when she was invited to play at Mercado Negro – a small bar and café in the centre of Ponta Delgada. In attendance was Bruno Moreira – a co-founder Rádio Vaivém along with Tremor’s artistic director Luís Banrezes Kitas – who invited Canto to take part in a residency programme. “It was just me and Bruno, and I showed him all of my original materials and raw melodies, and he was like: ‘Okay, we’re going to turn them into songs,’” she recalls. “And we turned them into something real – these are the songs I presented today.”
Seeing early signs of a scene blossoming has given her the belief that there are local, offline opportunities. “I think seeing these things happen in the last couple of years was what made me want to come out of my shell,” she says. “There’s festivals like Tremor and residencies, and my friend has a collective where people get together and make music. And seeing this artistic community start to grow – there’s bars and cafés where people are like: ‘I’ll teach you how to DJ and you teach me how to play music.’ Surrounding myself with these people has made me realise that there are things around me.”
Changes have not gone unnoticed for Valério either. “I can see some progress in terms of the hip-hop community,” he says. “People are going to each other’s houses and doing more stuff. But we still don’t have collaborative spaces. There are no youth clubs, or cultural and community spaces for artists.”
It’s what he, and the rest of the Azorean scene, hope to build from the ground up. “Hopefully in the future, if not exporting musicians worldwide, I want them to create in the island – to have a space to create,” he continues. “We have so many talented musicians, no matter what the genre is. Think of [legendary Cuban collective] Buena Vista Social Club; before they did the documentary in ’99, people didn’t know about them, and they were doing music for the sake of it. So maybe in 10 years, we can be ready for when a documentary pops up, so we can show the world our really world-class musicians – that’s my dream.”
For more information on Tremor Festival and tickets to the 2026 edition, visit its official website.
Isaac Muk is Huck’s digital editor. Follow him on Bluesky.
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