Norberto Lobo

His music doesn’t belong to any particular school. With his bossa-nova-flavored guitar, he flies through time and space, touching on styles from bluegrass to British folk and jazz to tambura.

Many heroic tales between Brazil and Portugal were written with the guitar, from Baden Powell to Carlos Paredes. With the young Portuguese Norberto Lobo, a new chapter begins. Lobo, born in 1982, didn’t attend any music school, and his music doesn’t belong to any school. But it virtually flies through history. Deeply influenced by bossa nova, it also draws on bluegrass, jazz, British folk, the “New Primitive” school around John Fahey and the atonal aesthetic of New Music. It makes space for the electric guitar and even the tambura, the guitar’s Eastern cousin, without the character of the musician ever getting lost amid the abundant stylistic references. Lobo says that when he listens to others play, he “never hears the style, but rather always the musician.” That’s exactly how his own music should be heard – and, to be honest, the only way that it can be.