Noticed it 21 August 2011 and before, wrote the article
Paco Bandeira I discovered just after his goodbye concert in his native town of Elvas, in the east of Portugal. They played songs from the album, made of the concert, on local radio stations Rádio Elvas and Rádio Portalegre. I heard them online via internet.
I had no idea who the musician was, didn’t understand the name. A little later on, I found one of those songs on Youtube. In hindsight, I think it must have been ‘Lavra a dor’, here in a recorded version, here with footage from the concert.
I think the title is wordplay: ‘lavra a dor’ (which is pronounced with a clear, open /a/) can mean ‘cultivate the pain’ or ‘he ploughs the pain’, while ‘lavrador’ (with a different kind of a sound) is a worker, a labourer.
I’d have to study the lyrics of the song to see if that makes sense. Maybe I will one day.
So that concert was in 2007, which I derive from comments to the Youtube videos. However, I found a note saying I discovered Paco Bandeira by name, on Youtube on 28 September 2008. I forgot to record which Youtube video exactly that was, but I noted the title “Quando o sol me vem buscar”. But that is a different song than ‘Lavra a dor’.
I immediately liked his voice, his timing, his diction, and the clearly Spanish influence in his music. This may be due from the fact (that I learned about only today, 25 January 2012) that Paco Bandeira went to Spain at the age of 14 and became a radio presenter for a local station in the neighbouring Spanish city of Badajoz.
Now you may wonder why this article appears in the series Similar people. Well, that’s because somebody who has nothing to do with him, who is not a musician, but a former Dutch politician and now bank manager, looks a bit like him: Gerrit Zalm.
Totally irrelevant, but I though I’d mention it. Sorry about that.
By mere coincidence, yesterday evening (no, in fact it was recorded on Wednesday 4 January, not 24, says the announcing voice), Paco Bandeira was the guest artist in Rádio Amália’s live show Estrela da tarde (‘Evening Star’):