Rare, unique, self-assured and with many messages to share through her music with the world, the young Portuguese singer Fábia Maia talks to LJDJ member Filipa about her personality, her song ‘Dia Lindo’, her dreams and her upcoming new album.
Could you introduce yourself with three words?
Empathic, funny and extremely impatient. These were four words. I'm sorry, I had to put extremely (laughs).
Knowing that you started off with covers on Youtube in 2014, could you tell us how your passion for music started?
When I was younger, I suffered a lot in school because I didn't have a lot of friends and my grandmother noticed that. I come from a humble family, but still, my grandmother proposed to my mother and to me, to begin with, guitar lessons, to open a little bit more. And I must admit that she was right, attending the School of Music, allowed me to meet a lot of people, which was great for me. At the time, Avril Lavigne had her debut with the album 'Let Go' and I was a super fan of her and wanted to be like her. Actually, I still wear my hair like her (laughs).
I was a back vocal in my school and I only played the guitar and maybe the drums a little bit but that was it, I never wanted to be a singer, I wanted to be a guitarist. I wanted to be like Jimi Hendrix and to play like God! But when my grandmother passed away, I didn't quite know how to do the mourning, seeing as she raised me along with my mother, hence I had a strong relationship and bond with her. In a way, I associated the guitar with my grandmother, and with time I was able to let it go and began to sing for real. I'm still a young girl, but in a certain phase of my youth, I discovered that I like girls too, so things became a bit complicated and it was a mess in my head. At the time, I was growing up, we didn't say things like 'look this is my girlfriend' and for me, it was a big problem. As I said, I discovered that and I actually liked a girl a lot, but then she left me and I was very sad about it.
That girl listened to the music of hip hop in Portugal. And actually, I didn't like hip hop a lot at the time, but I found a way to make that music sound more melodic, so I posted a video on YouTube, and after one or two days, I was invited by rappers like Valete and Allen Halloween to sing with them. That was a joy for me, and that's basically how everything started.
Apart from Avril Levigne, do you have any artists that inspired you throughout your musical journey so far?
Yes, I do. I have Damien Rice, Amalia, Zeca Afonso, Antonio Variações, Benjamin Clementine and PJ Morton. But I also like Lauren Hill, I know that she's crazy, but I love her music. Variações is my favorite one and he will always be my favorite! If you notice, I like artists that are more 'outside to the inside' and not the other way around.
In a year of uncertainty, due to the pandemic, you took part in the Festival da Cancao in Portugal, where you touched the hearts of the Portuguese with your song ‘Dia Lindo’. What is the message of the song and what does it mean to you?
Freedom. Because actually, 'Dia Lindo' is a way that I found to make a statement, the statement that shows that I changed. Because, as you see, I was in the middle, even if I didn't want that, I was trying to be someone of success in hip hop, and I wanted to be like the other guys and the other girls. And that was the wrong way of being. I found that a little later because I don't know, the universe conspires with me and all the doors are closed when I should not go in that kind of way. Hip hop is a very masculine way of doing music and that started to bother me a lot. And my last EP 'Santiago' actually talks about it. I closed the door to Hip Hop, and I started thinking, that maybe I should do what I like to do. I was trying to make rap, and that's not the way Fábia is, I often said that to myself. Two years before the 'Festival da Canção' I dreamt that I was singing at the festival and I told my musicians that one day I would sing in that stage and that they would laugh a lot on that day, and they started laughing at me. And I said, I'm not joking, I dreamt of it and I will be singing there. And in the year after, I was invited to be a jury in the Festival, but it was not what I wanted - I wanted to sing. Last year, I was invited to sing at the Festival, all I said was 'Thank you, God'.
It was very funny because I wrote 'Dia Lindo' one morning after I woke up and I wrote it in like five minutes in my head, and to be honest it was the first time that I noticed that began to accept myself and the person that I really am. It was the first time that I was not pretending to be someone that I wasn't and singing something that wasn't my style. For the first time, I was able to say openly, that I was a bisexual person, that I was dating a girl or a boy, I was able to accept that in me and 'Dia Lindo' talks about freedom. I didn't want to bring to the Festival a normal song of love, but I didn't want that, I really wanted the song to be a form of healing my wounds.
You released your first EP in 2017, Your debut EP, which counts with your collaboration with two well-known names of the Portuguese Hip Hop, Slow J and Jimmy P, how was this experience and what you?
Jimmy P, he told me that no matter what, what you do, you have to be on your own. He helped me a lot in the beginning. I can't tell you that we are close friends, but we talk. Obviously he's a great artist and like I said in the beginning, it was very important for me to participate in his album. Besides that, Diogo Piçarra participated in Jimmy's album 'Essência' too, and for me being part of that album with one song was a big thing!
You pour your heart into what you do. Do you see your music as a way to open minds and to heal people, just like music heals you?
I don't know, the purpose of having everything, I mean you see a lot of celebrities, talking about talk that. Of course, they have it all, but in the end, it doesn't matter. If you don't help people, you are not doing anything with music. That's my way of seeing things and for me, my music has to be a way of healing because when the music starts healing yourself, it will get to the others and heal them too.
Because if you, nowadays we are always constantly representing someone. And I'm not talking about me, I'm talking about you too. We are constantly representing someone, but that isn't bad at all, it means that you are not alone. Let me give you an example, if you are too fat, someone in the world is too fat too.
I put the balance on myself. I suffer a lot from the anxiety of not having the doors always open for me, but I have this kind of feeling inside myself that tells me that I will be everything I want to be. And we see a lot of stories of success that start like this, and that's the beautiful way of starting, step by step.
For example, in my album 'Avariações', which I am doing now, I would say that I made it thinking in Variações, and it is truly an honor to say this. But talking about Variações, I'm talking about me. For me, it is more important to play in, for example, a pride party than winning maybe the Portuguese Award 'Globos de Ouro' or a Latin Grammy. It's not impossible, Salvador Sobral was there and Carolina Deslandes too, but that's not the thing that really inspires me. The thing that inspires me is to do music and to have people come to me and remember me for what I am and my songs.
Actually, after singing 'Dia Lindo' at the Festival, ten mothers came to me with different stories about how the song touched them or how it was part of an important event or moment in their lives. This is actually what I want, I want to be approached by these stories. And there's one story that I recall very well. A mother came to me and she told me that she was sitting on the couch with her husband when her daughter passed away when she was seven years old, because of leukemia. And I recall the mother telling me, that when I first sang 'Dia Lindo' at the Festival, she saw her daughter perfectly and was having a conversation with her, in her head. Her daughter was telling her 'I'm okay, mother, you can rest now' and all this while I was performing 'Dia Lindo' on TV. These kinds of stories are the stories that really matter to me.
Where do you take your inspiration from, for your songs? Is it from real life experiences?
From God, because, and I don't mean God in a religious way, because I'm not religious at all. But my life is constantly based on things that happen to me, that have no explanation at all.
The way that I'm doing my things right now is like a falling voice in my head and the things come to me and the music comes to me, my full album that I'm doing now came to me without permission, you know, and my grandfather, he was a writer and one day, before he passed away, someone asked him how the inspiration came to him and what were the moments when he felt inspired and he made that poker face and said 'I don't have inspiration, I just sit there and something comes to me' and he said that it's like a avalanche.
I don't know how to explain that, but that kind that happened to my grandfather in terms of inspiration, happens to me. That's God for me, you know, the inspiration is God for me, not like a physical item that you can imagine, it's like a force that guides you. What also inspires me a lot, are women, not in a romantic way, but rather in a survival way.
Is it your intention to continue to focus on the Portuguese language in your songs and to take your music and the Portuguese language to new horizons? Or do you plan to sing in English or other languages too?
I could only sing in English or in another language if in Portuguese, when in Portugal, everything was Iike imagined. I have to sing in Portuguese for the Portuguese to think, okay, this girl is not, is not talking about, love and how he left me and how the girl left for another. Obviously I listen all the kinds of music, but I want people to know that I said something really important, I guess. And Portugal has a lot do in questions of. LGBT rights and woman rights, domestic violence in Portugal, as you know, is amazing in a bad way. And transphobia also. Such topics really mean a lot to me and singing about Variações, is like, you know, when Variações was alive,I was told that he suffered a lot, and when he passed away, there were a lot of boxes in his room with letters saying, that he should die, and after 12 years he was loved and that's the kind of success that I think that is eternal success, when you think metaphorically and in Jesus Christ, you see that the people that suffered the most will be always be the eternal ones and that's pure. It's not, I think that you can discuss and stories like that happen, I don't know if I will be listen and appreciated after 12 or 30 years, but I think that things that I want for me are so important that they should be eternal on one day.
And that serves as my inspiration too.
So from what you said, I can take away that you want to be a voice and raise awareness to important topics such as domestic violence, transphobia and everything. Talking about women's rights and focusing on that, do you feel that the Portuguese hip hop branch or the music branch in general is male-dominated?
Of course. Yes. Do you know any artists, in Portugal, a female artist besides Ana Moura that is now independent, but she had it all with a major before. Do you know any artists like Anitta in Brazil in Portugal, you don't. You don't and that's the kind of woman that I wanna be like, Anitta, but not dancing like her because I don't have any kind of (says 'jeito' in Portuguese), I don't have the, her moves, of course.
But she has the vision, that she is a woman and that she can be and acheive whatever she want, and I think that I want to be a woman with that vision .
Looking back on everything, what is the Fábia Maia of today most proud of?
I'm proud of myself because and that's not a narcissist way of telling this, but I'm really proud of myself because everything, but everything that I achieved was was me, and I think in the future, it'll be the same way.
And now I have people that really love me, like João (manager) and I have musicians thatr really love me for who I am. They listen to me, how you are listening to me now. In essence, I have the right people to make the things work now. I'm proud of myself too, because I grew up and I don't have any kind of fear of being who I am anymore.
In what ways have you grown for the better?
I cannot say that I became more empathic because I was born empathic. So, that's not a thing that can be improved. But I am more focused now than I was before. I suffer a lot for not having the things the way I wanted to. I suffer a lot because I want to do things fast because I'm afraid sometimes of not having time to live the things, but this is just how fear works in our heads to take us down.
But I'm really more focused now. I don't mind if I work, seven days a week to study and to make music, because I'm doing things my way.
Would you say that your upcoming album is a very personal one?
The word 'Avariações' altogether means something that is broken. I've heard a lot of times, people being homophobic and saying that someone is 'avariado', someone is crazy and I wanted to put an emphasis on that in my album. It talks about love between to girls, for example, it has a participation of a figure in Luxembourg and you have to see him actually, because he is becoming an iconic queer artist in Luxembourg. He accepted to, to be a part of my album and we have two songs, one in Portuguese and French and another one in English and Portuguese and that's and the other songs are only in Portuguese. I've made one in Portuguese and French because I wanted to speak out to the emigrant communities, as they are important to me too.
Finally, I would like to ask you, if you could leave a special message for our readers?
I will think of myself when I was your age and, when I was your age I felt lost and I want to tell young people that being lost is part of our lives too, you have to live it and you have to transform it in something really good. And in this life, no matter what you do, how many cars you have, if you don't help in the progress and the evolution of minds, you are doing nothing at all.
Dreams are like this dreams are like this, a way of letting something good.
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Interview by Filipa Moreira
09.08.2022