Guitarist and composer António Chainho has decided to end his career at the age of 86, performing one last show this month in Lisbon, a decision he justified because he “found it difficult to play some songs”.
“I began to feel that it was time to give up the guitar, which I never will. If you start playing with this instrument when you’re six years old, it’s impossible to put it down,” said the musician in an interview with the Lusa news agency.
His farewell show, “Lisboa Saudade”, is scheduled for September 13, at 9pm, at Praça do Município, in Lisbon, with guests Carminho and António Zambujo, his disciple Marta Pereira da Costa, the string quartet Naked Lunch and his regular musicians, Ciro Bertini, on bass and accordion, and Tiago Oliveira, on viola.
Before the concert, today at 6pm, at Casa Comum, in Lisbon, his biography, “O Abraço da Guittarra”, by Moema Siva, will be presented, with the presence of Chainho, musician Ciro Bertini and filmmaker Tiago Figueiredo, who is preparing a documentary about the guitarist.
With a career spanning nearly 60 years, Chainho told Lusa that one of the reasons he made this decision was when he noticed problems with the index finger on his right hand, “which is the basis for playing”.
“In the things I learned from the great guitarists, in the more complicated ones, then I already feel a certain difficulty,” said the author of “Voando sobre o Alentejo”, comparing a guitarist’s fingers to runners’ legs. “I’m now feeling the problems of being almost 90 years old.”
António Chainho was born on January 27, 1938 in S. Francisco da Serra, in Santiago do Cacém, and managed the feat of recording an album, “O Abraço da Guitarra”, after the age of 85.
“I don’t know of anyone who recorded after the age of 60, Carlos Paredes still tried to record, and as for the other guitarists, I don’t know of anyone who recorded after the age of 80,” he said.
António Chainho recalled the first steps he took in learning the Portuguese guitar, his instrument of choice, as a plaything, also influenced by his father “who had magnificent fingers”, combining his “good musical ear”, listening to the melodies he heard on the radio, by those he calls his masters, Armandinho, Raul Nery, Jaime Santos, among others.
“I always listened to the radio, and I had a good ear, and I remember playing with my friends and suddenly I’d heard a program the day before and I’d try to reproduce what I’d heard, and my father, who played the popular modinhas, would sometimes say to me ‘oh son that’s no good’, and I’d try to explain to him how I could, but it was always a very good help that I had from my father, who had the facility to play certain things, which I then started to do,” he told Lusa.
His compulsory military service took him to Lisbon, where he made direct contact with the fado scene, “making his debut” in mid-1960, in a fado house in Praça do Chile, where he played “dressed as a magala” and left on shoulders, such was his success, as he told Lusa.
He did his military service in Mozambique and returned when he met his fellow countryman Carlos Gonçalves (1938-2020), author of the songs “Lavava no Rio, Lavava” and “Lá Vai Maria”, written and created by Amália Rodrigues.
Carlos Gonçalves convinced him to take his place at the Retiro da Severa fado house, where he stayed for around six months, and then moved to the O Folclore restaurant, also in Lisbon, which was supported by the then National Secretariat for Information, Popular Culture and Tourism (SNI).
The restaurant closed at 23:30, which allowed Chainho to frequent other fado houses in Bairro Alto, which closed between 03:00 and 04:00, becoming more experienced and well-known.
At this time, he was recording albums “practically every week”, as they were very popular with the Portuguese communities, he explained.
He began his career as an accompanist and, at a certain point, because he “didn’t have time to study” the melodies and compose, he opted to accompany fado singers Carlos do Carmo (1939-2021) and Frei Hermano da Câmara for more than 20 years, as well as Teresa Tarouca (1942-2019), “but for less time”. Later, he worked with Rão Kyao, with whom he made the album “Pão, Azeite e Vinho” and toured.
“It was great to work with Rão Kyao, we did a lot of shows, he admired me a lot. Rão’s work has nothing to do with fado, but he fell in love with fado through his father, who loved fado and was friends with Amália, and he started going to Amália’s house. He was already a well-known musician and he evolved a lot when he was in France,” he told Lusa.
The list of musicians he has accompanied and recorded with is vast and includes names such as Maria Bethânia, Adriana Calcanhotto, Marta Dias, António Calvário, Paco de Lucia, John Williams, María Dolores Pradera, José Carreras, Jürgen Ruck, Pedro Abrunhosa, Paulo de Carvalho, Ana Bacalhau, Sara Tavares and Rui Veloso.
The musician acknowledged that he will miss his career, but will continue “playing for friends” and accompanying the school that bears his name in Santiago do Cacém.
Chainho is proud to have encouraged the opening of a Portuguese guitar school in Santiago do Cacém, in the district of Setúbal, despite criticism from colleagues who told him to stop.
“I’ve heard from colleagues of mine who said ‘give it a rest, this is not enough for us, let alone other guitarists’,” he said. Chainho thinks the opposite, because the more players there are “the more the Portuguese guitar will become known”.
“I passed on everything I knew,” said the musician, who said he never had any problems with new talent emerging. “I’ve always helped, and in this school there are already students playing very complicated songs.”
“Today we have young guitarists with a lot of talent and I’m very happy,” he emphasized.
Referring to his work as a composer, António Chainho told Lusa that “it has a lot to do with intuition”.
“I used to play Armandinho, Jaime Santos and all those great guitarists, but through them I kept learning, and I kept looking for melodies, until at a certain point, I started recording, I had a small tape recorder, I recorded those little things and from then on I would work on the themes, and I got carried away and started working and trying to compose things, I thought I couldn’t, but I got my way of playing, which is a bit different.”
Regarding his musical creation, he said that it reflects “mestiçagens, the fruit of contacts with the music of the world”.
“I’ve been trying to chart new paths for the Portuguese guitar,” he says. He concludes: “My music reflects the many journeys I’ve made, the musicians I’ve come into contact with and worked with. It seeks to breathe in the music of the world”.
Chainho will continue to compose. “I’m always composing, every day I pick up the guitar, start by making scales, and if I come up with something different, I try to record it and, after a few days, if I see that it’s good enough to complete, I work on it until I reach my goals.”
Pointed out as “one of the virtuosos of the Portuguese guitar” by the “Encyclopedia of Music in Portugal in the 20th century”, António Chainho was decorated by the President of the Republic in March 2022 with the rank of Commander of the Order of Infante D. Henrique.
His discography, which began in 1975 with “Guitarradas”, includes albums such as “Guitarra Portuguesa” (1977), “A Guitarra e Outras Mulheres” (1998), which was recorded by Bruce Swedien, “LisGoa” (2010), which featured Natasha Lewis, Sonia Shirsat and Remo Fernandes, “Entre Amigos” (2012), with performers such as Camané, Ney Matogrosso and Fernando Alvim, and “Cumplicidades” (2015).
