Milhanas: Carrying the Future

Once we listen to Milhanas we immediately get struck by the special tone of her voice. However, it won’t take us long to notice that her voice is only the key that unveils a world on which poetry and melody draw lines on an infinite canvas.
It’s quite easy for anyone to listen to her sing, it’s easy for anyone to somehow relate to what she sings about but, ironically, it’s hard for most of us to accept the fact that she’s only 22.
She was fostered around music since she was born and when she was only three years old she went to music classes for babies. Since then, she developed an healthy relationship with music as she experimented lots of different things: violin, gospel choir, jazz combo, modern music, amongst others. This clearly developed her ear and musical instinct but also gave her the space to experience pleasure through these activities.

In spite of all this, it was by singing solo and developing her vocal technique that she felt at home. 

Like every other teen she was most keen about pop music but she reconnected with the artists her parents played at home since she was born: Fausto, Jorge Palma, José Mario Branco, Ella Fitzgerald, James Davies and realized how impactful their songs were to her and, later on, to her identity as an artist.

Her deep raspy tone clearly takes us to a new place where all these artists meet and where truth, above everything else, prevails. Like in Fado.
Four years ago, right before COVID, Milhanas turned going to Fado houses into an habit and discovered how that nightly routine could influence her artistry. She fell in love with the sound of portuguese guitar and with the way the singers turned every word into the rawest truth (maybe that’s why she lists the lyrics of a song as the most important thing to her). After that, the original songs she already had written took a completely different route to what we can listen to today. She found her own redemption in that genre.
To her personal body of work, she quotes AGIR (who got in touch with her via her friend and guitarist Rodrigo Correia) as the person who stimulated her to write more songs and, when the time came, to release them as an album. Between them two a bond was created which led them to be contestants at Festival da Canção 2022 with a song written by him and performed by her.

If an artist has any sort of mission when doing what he/she does, for Milhanas that mission relies on being a vehicle of truth. That goes from the content of the song to how one uses its own instrument to deliver a message and how one presents herself. She’s one of the very few artists in Portugal who has been creating a visual aesthetic according to what she’s singing about with a concept that complements her music.

‘I think it’s quite hard to criticize something you feel that’s genuine’.  To her, an artist fails when somehow lets everything else than its own purpose interfere on the artwork. It’s not a matter of external judgement rather than their own conscience; the inner process and pleasure you take out of it should be about purpose and truth and not to deliver just what other people (or the industry) want you to deliver.
Once you are in good terms with everything inside of you, you feel that you can be vulnerable to just ‘happen’ on stage. With no disguises, no posing, no barriers.
If you let yourself be vulnerable on stage you can captivate your audience and therefore touch them via your craft.
Even though she’s just starting her career, she had the opportunity to share the stage with one of her biggest influences and the persons that, according to her, perfectly embodies all of this: Salvador Sobral. Last year they sang together in Cádiz (Spain) and that is a moment she highlights as she states his honesty and musicianship as utterly inspiring.

As for the future, she is working to make a name in Portugal and, as time goes by, to perform all around Europe and, someday, in Brasil. She’s not taking it as a goal but hopes to eventually be a consequence of her work.

See more details about the concert that will take place on 13th of May

https://www.sonsemtransito.com/pt/noticias/1004/milhanas


Photography: Tomás Monteiro
Styling: Mónica Lafayette

Hair: Eric Ribeiro
Make Up: Elodie Fiuza
Production: Snowberry
Talent: Milhanas

Boots: Apple of Eden; Total Look: Dino Alves

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