I am positively gutted that I can't get to Portugal to see the "os três cantores" gigs (José Mário Branco, Sérgio Godinho and Fausto) in Lisbon and Porto. This is a collaboration which may never happen again. It has been described as "a concert without a unifying theme, other than this clear conceit: the reunion of three artists who worked to modernize Portuguese popular music. 'We are the heirs of Zeca Afonso, of Edmundo Bettencourt and all who came before, but we are modernizers of our cultural legacy,' said Fausto."

Diario de Noticias have published a few articles on this landmark get-together, which is specifically in celebration of the Fausto album Por Este Rio acima.

Briefly, the Angolan background of Fausto deeply influenced his work: he spent his childhood and adolescence in the former Portuguese colony, where he formed his first band, Os Rebeldes. In 1968 he was attending college in Lisbon, where he got closer to the student movement and the political activism of the time. It was there that he would feel the influence of musicians like José Afonso and Adriano Correia de Oliveira. "Shortly after landing in Portugal on 30 April 74, I met Fausto," said José Mário Branco. "At the time, I heard some songs that he had just finished recording for the second album, and I felt a great complicity, musically and poetically."

It is through Jose Mario that Fausto would know Sérgio Godinho, in 1974. "Although we played together in many shows, but I didn't know his music before his arrival to Portugal," says Godinho.

In 1982, Fausto edited Por Este Rio acima, the first disc of a trilogy about the Lusitanian diaspora (which would continue with Terra Ardente, the second disc, in 1994, after a wait of 12 years). Por Este Rio acima was a work that would mark irrevokeably Portuguese popular music. A Ópera Mágica do Cantor Maldito (2003) is the last record of originals from the composer, who is currently finishing the last chapter of this trilogy. "[The third of the trilogy] will be a double album, with more than 20 songs," said Fausto. "The disc will have orchestrations by José Mário Branco. It's a thing we never did before."

Um marco chamado 'Por Este Rio acima'

Um palco para três lendas da música portuguesa