Live blog
15:50 CEST: Rehearsal 7: 🇵🇹Portugal - NAPA – Deslocado
Time for our final rehearsal of the day, and it’s Portugal’s NAPA. They are Guilherme, Lourenço, Francisco, Diogo and João, a 5-piece band from the Portuguese island of Madeira who released their first album back in 2019.
Sung in Portuguese (our seventh language of the day!), Deslocado translates as ‘displaced’ – it’s a song about feeling out of place in the city, but also the peace of knowing you can always go home. The emotion is very much in the tradition of Portuguese Fado, but the sweeping musical arrangement of Deslocado also adds a contemporary summer vibe. They describe their influences as bands like The Beatles, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Arctic Monkeys, and you can definitely hear a touch of all three in this performance.
The set-up of the band on stage is the same as we saw at Festival da Canção, but a few things have been added for the Basel stage. Firstly, the band’s outfits have changed – now they all have long-sleeved jackets or shirts in different muted colours that elevate the whole thing to a new level of style. The LED wall adds some lovely floating clouds and animated skyscapes that change colour in sync with the LED arch, all of which adds to the dreamlike quality of this performance. The harmonies are stunning in this big space – even if you don’t understand Portuguese you can feel the emotion, and those gentle final notes gave us goosebumps. A lovely way to end the day.
IT'S GREYSIE IT'S PARTY