Nuno Cristo

Nuno Cristo was born in Lisbon on January 3, 1960. He spent his preteen years in Parede, a beach town suburb of Lisbon. Nuno’s first became interested in musical instruments when his mother bought him a bombo (a Portuguese traditional drum) when he was in elementary school. When he was 11 years old, his family moved to Lourenço Marques, Mozambique, where his parents would work as teachers. While living there, Nuno was exposed to a wide range of Portuguese and African music, including artists who were censored by the Estado Novo dictatorship. Nuno’s parents also had many instruments in their house, which he played around with. Four years later, following the the Carnations Revolution of April 25th, 1974, his family was forced to return to Portugal.

Back in Lisbon, Nuno started taking music lessons and learning how to make instruments. He frequented the shops of instrument makers in the city, including the Grácio family, who made Portuguese guitars. Nuno built many of the instruments he wanted to play because they were unavailable in shops. His musical exploration coincided with the Portuguese folk music revivalism that emerged after the revolution, informed by the recordings of the ethnomusicologists Armando Leça and Michel Giacometti, and the communist singer/songwriters who wrote songs of resistance to the dictatorship.

Nuno started an undergraduate degree in psychology but dropped out three years later once he found a job as bagpiper in the theatre company O Bando. In 1983, the company toured Canada, performing in Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto, Quebec City, and Montreal, as part of a festival for Portuguese children and youth. Aida Jordão – who later became an accomplished feminist and leftist playwright, theatre director, and academic – who had emigrated to Toronto with her parents when she was 9 years old, did an internship with O Bando. There she met Nuno, with whom she would marry.

In 1985, Nuno and Aida migrated to Toronto, a city whose cultural diversity he fell in love with during his first visit. He brought with him a set of bagpipes, cavaquinho, and other Portuguese traditional instruments. Having some experience with visual arts, from drawing illustrations of the human body for biology books published by his father, Nuno found work in graphic design. He also quickly started making instruments and playing with local artists from various cultural backgrounds. For the first ten years that he lived in Canada, Nuno delivered instrument-making workshops in public schools as part of a program funded by the Ontario government, until it was eliminated by Premier Mike Harris. He later did similar work in Cuba and Nicaragua. Nuno has multiple times showcased his instruments at exhibitions in the Ontario Science Centre, Harbourfront Centre, and the One of a Kind show.

Nuno has formed multiple musical groups in Toronto. The first was the Cantares Tradicionais, which performed with traditional Portuguese instruments and was associated with the Portuguese Canadian Democratic Association. The group played in and outside Toronto’s Portuguese community, who was not used to that kind of traditional music – the more common genres were fado and ranchos folclóricos. Another musical group was Alvorada, which brought together musicians and instruments of various nationalities that played Portuguese melodies and rhythms.

In 1990, now Canadian citizens, Nuno and Aida moved back to Portugal with the intention of staying permanently. Nuno continued to make instruments and deliver workshops. It was during this time that Nuno started making string instruments, particularly the cavaquinho and the Portuguese guitar. He also co-founded the Grupo de Gaiteiros de Lisboa in 1991, with Paulo Marinho and Francisco Bouzo, which was originally conceived to perform in the streets during the city’s Festa dos Santos Populares in June. That group would later become one of the most respect traditional music ensembles in Portugal. The following year, Nuno and Aida returned to Toronto.

Back in Toronto, Nuno started learning, performing, and later giving lessons on Portuguese guitar and cavaquinho. He formed other groups, including Anima Fado with Larry Lewis and the late Cristina Taborda, which performed in international festivals. Nuno has also been asked by young Portuguese-Canadian artists to collaborate in their own projects by playing Portuguese guitar. He is featured in the last song of Nelly Furtado internationally successful debut album Whoa Nelly (2000), titled “Scared of You;” and in the song “Our Time is Now” (2015) of the indie rock band Ménage. Nuno has also recorded two solo albums, Travels in Lusomania (2004) and Minha Terra Banzambira (2005).