The changes guide the career of Salvador Sobral, from frequenting the jazz clubs of Lisbon to studying in Barcelona, and from there, to winning the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Amar pelos dois. A path that has not stopped after going through the operating room to receive a new heart, nor now that he is the father of Aïda, the 11-month-old girl who has changed his life again while he was in the studio recording Timbre (Warner), fifth album by the 33-year-old Portuguese, in which his voice becomes the protagonist to sing eleven songs composed with Leo Aldrey and his sister, Luisa Sobral, in which a cappella singing intersects with rhythms Brazilians amid sounds of happiness.
"My voice is what distinguishes me - affirms the singer, on a promotional visit to Barcelona -, my timbre, which is why the title of the album is something that did not happen on the other albums, where there was more democracy of instruments. It is the celebration to find my artistic personality, my vocal identity. It's not easy to put a song on the radio and for you to recognize the singer directly, and I think this happens to me, it's something I struggled with since I was studying here in Barcelona, at the Taller de Músics".
The race to conquer this own voice – which continues to be modified, according to the latest influences – began “by imitating, because the first artist I listened to on my own was Stevie Wonder, and I imitated him. From there I switched to Ray Charles and all my life I imitated Caetano, Billy Holliday, Chet Baker, Sílvia Pérez Cruz. I put all these influences into one pot and found my own timbre. After the Workshop it was an epiphanic moment, and when I went to Eurovision I already had my voice. But it's always mutating, suddenly I become obsessed with Tim Bernardes and steal things from him, or with Samara Joy, and I steal his chromaticisms. I like to steal what interests me from each artist”.
About his famous Amar pelos dois, the winning song of Eurovision 2017, he admits that “it will be part of me all my life, it is my Born in the USA, my Like a virgin, my hit. There was a time when I rejected her because she told me that I was so much more than that. He didn't touch her. But I spent a year and a half without singing it and people, rather than getting angry, became sad. I went to see my big idols... and they all sing the songs that made them famous, Caetano sings O leaozinho, José González sings Heartbeats, which he wrote 20 years ago. Then I made peace and I sing it in all the concerts".
In Timbre, Sobral dedicates a song to the person who gave him his new heart. "Since the transplant I wanted to do it, to use my talent to thank a person who had to die so that I could be alive. But I still didn't have the maturity or the calmness to do this issue. This is the third record I've made post-transplant and it's the first time I said OK”. He wrote it in Spanish, precisely "to have an emotional distance, because if I do it in my mother tongue I wouldn't be able to sing it without crying, you break down completely", he confesses. He says that he feels the responsibility to treat the new heart well, "even though I have never been to drink alcohol or anything, and that makes me happy, because I feel that it is not just me, there is another person who also lived in this body, I can't be doing stupid things".
He dedicates a song to Sílvia Pérez Cruz, "to repay all the inspiration he has brought me, and what better way than with my voice". She sings the song with Silvana Estrada, because "first we thought of Sílvia, but it was strange for us to sing a song about herself". At the piano, Lucía Fumero, who joins two Catalan musicians in the band, Eva Fernández and Magalí Sare ("I'm Catalanizing my group, it's a Machiavellian plan to live here again", he jokes). For him, Barcelona has "musical quality, technical quality and a lot of sensitivity. There is no snobbery or masculinity so present in the world of jazz in Lisbon, I notice a lot of musical openness and much more support from the Catalan Government for exporting music than from Portuguese”.
The disc closes with Jorge Drexler in Al légar. "In 2010 I went to one of his concerts and he asked if anyone in the audience wanted to do a solo, half joking, I think, but I raised my hand and went on stage. After the concert I went to say hello to him and we got in touch. I wrote him a lot of messages until one day I went to Madrid and we recorded the song. Now when I play at the Palau I always ask: 'Does anyone in the audience want to do a solo?'"
