In Italo Calvino’s 1972 novel Invisible Cities (Le città invisibili), Marco Polo describes a multitude of fictional cities he has visited on all the travels that led him to Kublai Kahn, each one with a very distinctive feature. At some point, Kahn suspects all these cities are in fact descriptions of the many facets of Marco Polo’s unnamed hometown Venice.
There’s something to it. Any given city will inspire many different depictions according to the narrator’s point of view. Some of these subjective depictions will be based on a comparison with the narrator’s original hometown or their perception within the portion of the city they got to experience. Also, some of these depictions will overlap between narrators, others won’t. But the resulting mosaic is never far off from the truth … or at least one’s truth.
A Portrait of Lisbon is the attempt by Yorkshire-native Mattia Corda, aka The Mighty String, to describe with music the city he’s called home for the past six years. As stated in the record’s introductory note, he wanted to “capture the real essence of the city”, beyond tourism, hype, etc.. More than a concept album, it’s a context album, influenced by his surroundings, current times, the mundane city of daily life he dwells in; particularly, in his neighborhood of Arroios, branded by the likes of Time Out and the odd foreign outlet as “one of the world’s coolest neighborhoods.”
The songs broach a plethora of topics, from bad neighbours to bad customer service, from the plague of digital nomads to the plague of construction sites, from shortage of public transport to shortage of parking space, from park life to street art: both the things that amuse and the ones that irk him, but always delivered in a humorous way — and not in the most obvious genre: Calypso music.
The album has a dozen tracks interspersed with audio samples that anyone who has lived long enough in Lisbon will instantly recognize: a tram wheezing past, a plane on its landing pathway, hammers and pneumatic drills, a locally famous blind beggar in the underground clinking on his tin, the jingle sound and voice of a station’s automatic announcer, and even a now-rarer amolador’s (i.e., knife-sharpener) flute.
Like a true Lisboeta, the Mighty String has developed a love-hate relationship with the city, and this record is his way of dealing with it.
Tell me about your musical journey. You play many instruments, but what instrument did you learn first?
My first love was the piano. We inherited a piano from a family friend, she was getting rid of it and didn’t have space in the house, so they just gave it to us. It was out of tune, but I got obsessed with it. I spent hours of my life just trying to work out notes, it was my therapy as a kid.
I also had some guitar lessons at school. My second teacher was like a positive male role model. He was cool, he inspired me. And then randomly, I auditioned for a regional music school. I was very fortunate because they were in a stage where they wanted to open a guitar department, so they kind of used me as an excuse to open this guitar department, they had this funding and wanted to expand. They probably wouldn’t have let me in otherwise. But I had to learn classical. I was 16, so I started pretty late.
I was also playing drums at that time in a band with some mates, The Phone Book. Coldplay named their song “Yellow” after the Yellow Pages; The singer in our band knew this, and he thought we could do the same thing. (laughs) It was this indie type of music, teenagers trying to copy the Arctic Monkeys, with our own weird influences in there, singing about school dramas and stuff like that. We even had a song about Tekken, the computer game.
Then, I took a year out to continue studying classical guitar before attending the Royal Northern College music in Manchester. And there, obviously I was exposed to some great teachers and modules, and whilst I was there, in my third year, I got the chance to play an opera, a Baroque opera on the lute. So, they lent me one: I spent the summer learning this ancient lute from the 17th century called the theorbo, which is a giant instrument with 14 strings made of gut. I had an amazing teacher, and it had a huge effect on me, because unlike the classical guitar, when asked, “what do you do?” and I said I played the theorbo, they would respond, “give me your number. I’ve got two gigs for you next week.”
It was kind of a niche. I started getting involved in chamber music: the classical guitar is a very solitary instrument, while the theorbo is used in the basso continuo in operas, cantatas, concertos. I loved the music. So, when I left college, I spent two years playing in this post-grunge band called Groves in Manchester and in this Baroque duo called Castello Duo, and then I was also working on the London scene doing some Baroque opera-like productions with some amazing world-class musicians and opera singers, who taught me how to listen, accompany people, and how important emotion is, the philosophy of performance and expression and the emotional content more than notes. It was transformational for me.
And then I had a bit of a burnout doing all these things: I didn’t know how to close doors and say no to things. I realized the last time I was happy in my life was when I went on tour with my post-grunge band and we went to Granada in Spain. I had spent three days there, staying up all night, waking up for the sunrise, so I just wrote on my calendar Go to Granada when I could quit my job, finish all my concerts and commitments. I grabbed the bag and my guitar and just set off hitchhiking, went to visit some friends on the way, went all through France, to some festivals, met and played with buskers. I was about to give up on Granada, as it was too hot, but I ended up meeting this guy in the north of Spain, who happened to be from Granada. He took me the last way down, and then I spent two winters there, playing in street bands, promoting gigs, running a gypsy jazz jam, and then I would spend six months in the UK and Germany doing festivals, playing with a few original bands, one called The Igneous Fig.
When I was in Granada, I started getting more into gypsy jazz, while playing on the street. At that time, I did a little travelling around Europe: I went to the Gypsy Jazz Festival in Belgium, I ended up taking my sister’s old trumpet because I couldn’t carry a guitar on planes, and when busking the police would pick on us over amplified guitars, so I just learnt trumpet in three months, with random hippies, playing reggae on the streets and stuff. When I got back to Granada, I started playing more trumpet. There was this park called Huerto de Carlos, where everyone meets and jams. I met people from all over the world, basically any musicians that were passing through town would end up there. It’s beautiful: the organic, the happening of music. I was kind of living the lifestyle then.
Ph.: Jacopo Ferri
How did you end up in Lisbon?
I got kind of bored in Granada, because it was small, the gigs that were available weren’t really what I do, and I wanted more. I was with that girl at that time, she had some connection with Lisbon. I thought, “Whatever, I’m just going to move here for six months. If it’s cheap and sunny and exotic and exciting, I’m OK with it because I’m going to go back to the UK and Germany and work in the summer.” I wasn’t too invested in the place when I came — and then COVID hit. I was supposed to be going on a 30-day tour with a swing band in German, and it all fell through.
So, while I was here, I picked up double bass playing in some street bands and I had a New Orleans jazz band for a while. I started songwriting on the ukulele, I swore when I was at Music College, I will never lower myself to play the ukulele. I used to think: that’s the flipping Gen Z girls instrument, me being a classical music snob at that time. Then I started letting go of all my conditioning of classical music and started realising nobody cares about what instrument you play. What people care about is having songs that are related to narratives, catchy melodies., speaking about something that’s in their heart, that they can relate to. Whether I do that on a ukulele or on a 1920s Martin jazz guitar or a trumpet, if it’s [taps on his heart] connected to what people want in their heart, it kicks ass.
So how did you get to Calypso from there?
I used to play in this school jazz band when I was 16, called the Blue Sails in Easingwold near York. We used to play all the famous jazz songs that anyone could know. I played mostly drums and piano and a bit of guitar as well. We had this one tune that we started playing called “Saint Thomas,” it’s got a very simple melody [hums it], but every time we played that, the vibe would just change, it would come into my consciousness: I would see people tapping their feet, swaying in their chair and actually looking at me and the band. Sometimes the song would last like 10 minutes because we were having so much fun.
Then, later on, when I was at university and I was mostly listening to Bach and Beethoven, I found this guitar player called Joseph Spence. I can’t explain why, but this record of his… he’s this kind of drunk guy from the Bahamas, I think, and it was recorded by one of these Alan Lomax types who take a tape recorder to the middle of a swamp and record some random guy. He’s basically playing gospel songs and Caribbean island melodies and he sings completely out of tune, he rambles his way through these songs. Some of the songs have his sisters singing with him… But he has this really unique guitar style, where he just taps his foot and plays all these melodies. I was completely obsessed with this record. I could listen to it for hours. There was something attractive and soothing about it. I don’t know how I found him, probably on some playlist online of random stuff. A lot of people are inspired by this guy. I started trying to learn some of his songs just in my spare time, and I’ve got really into him. I started doing a bit of research and finding out about his and Caribbean music.
And then when I lived in Spain, I was playing in this street band. Somehow there was a guy that I met from Salamanca, who came down, Artur, great sax player, and I asked him, “Do you know ‘Saint Thomas,’ just randomly, and he said, “Oh, yeah. And I know some other calypsos, we used to have a calypso band in Salamanca.” I just started learning a few calypsos, but the very commercial ones: Harry Belafonte is the one that everybody knows, who doesn’t really write authentic calypsos, it’s very watered down for the American audience. It doesn’t talk like the greats from Trinidad do, about social political issues and social commentary. He’s making entertainment — and not that he hasn’t brought it to the masses and written some great tunes that I like, but it’s different. I mean, he was part of my journey in finding out about it.
I guess I came to Lisbon and my listening habits changed. I started finding these Calypso vintage playlists and listening to the old stuff from the 1930s and 1940s and digging it up because it was all available online. There are these really old school documentaries called CITV Caribbean Insight TV on YouTube. They talk about the real stuff, featuring real Calypsonians, and they have live footage. I started seeing live performances. At that time, during Covid, I tried to write and perform some jazz songs – because I was playing a lot of traditional jazz in the street – and I thought, the chords are right, the words make sense, but this is not me. I don’t give a **** about this, love songs or whatever it is at this moment, so I’ll try writing something else. And I thought: what else do I like? Calypso!
So, I spent two months trying to write about this scenario about my flatmate, who was having this battle with the builders next door. They were building on Sunday morning and he was calling up the Council, it was a hilarious story and he was really passionate about doing something about it.
So, I started trying to write this song:
In my beautiful apartment building
We are fighting a terrible war
We’re facing the Lisbon builders
Who are fixing the place next door
I got halfway through, and I just couldn’t finish it, I was beating myself up. Randomly, I thought I’d make a Facebook post and ask for some help. I got an overwhelming response, people writing in paragraphs, saying songwriting is like making friends with a cat, you have to do it gently, all these people giving me tips and saying how they do it and encouraging me. One particular friend who’s a theatre performer said to finish a song, you have to look at the first half of the song and say what’s it about, and when you say what it’s about, that will become the subject of the last verse, that was a great tip. So, I’m finished with this song, and as I performed it, I realised, I think for the first time in my life, This is me. I didn’t have to think about remembering the words, pretending, connecting with the audience — they were just all on board. It just felt like I aligned with the universe. There was some kind of really transcendental moment of Did that just happen? That was so easy. And from there, that was enough for me to start trying to write some more songs, and then wanting to turn it into an album.
How did you come up with your stage name?
That was when I lived in Spain. My friends at that time started changing my name from Mattia Corda to Matthew String. It became my artistic name.
And how did you go from Matthew String to Mighty String? Because Mighty is a very widely used Calypsonian term.
I was living with two musicians and one amateur musician through COVID, and we would invite our mates round to the kitchen and jam out late at night. And my flatmate at the time tapped me on the back after I had improvised some funny lyrics about the guests — he knew I was obsessed with the Mighty Sparrow, who’s a very famous Calypsonian — and said, “You’re not Matthew String. You’re the Mighty String.”
Someone had told me that all artistic names, good ones, get given to you, you don’t make them up yourself, and it was just one of those moments where my soul said, “You know what, receive this is a gift.” And I wondered “Can I call myself the Mighty String? Yes, I ******* can”(laughs).
Did you write this album on the ukulele? On the guitar?
People ask me this a lot. What’s your primary instrument? Now I always say whatever instrument is needed to complement the mood, whatever is required that serves the music and play. So, when I composed, I think I would have probably had the ukulele in the house. It was my flatmate’s. I had a guitar knocking round. We had a piano and I would just switch around.
…In spite of the initial resistance to the ukulele
Yeah, I think that was it when I started songwriting, I couldn’t be bothered to take my guitar with me, because songwriting’s is kind of like a weird therapeutic adventure. I have to go somewhere I’ve never been, I sit in a cafe for 10 minutes. Then I go and sit in the park and I try and write, and then I stop and I walk around and talk to myself. And then I sit in another cafe. So, carrying the guitar was really impractical. Also, the ukulele is very similar to an instrument called the quattro from Venezuela. I managed to borrow one to record my album from an Argentinian girl. Songwriting is completely different for me being an instrumentalist, it’s a totally different way of being, a different part of your brain. It’s just a complete personality shift.
Ph.: Yağız Sofuoğlu
Weren’t you scared of being accused of cultural appropriation? You being half-English, half-Italian. Did you ever get any feedback in that vein?
Yes, I was. When I was learning other people’s music and I wasn’t sure whether to sing in a Caribbean accent or not. I found the accent to remind me of Italian English, which I heard a lot of when I was younger. Italian people singing and speaking English, this cultural exchange. I love fusion and anything creole.
I did completely feel petrified of it and I still am quite scared of it. I don’t think there’s any white Calypsonian I know of. But what happened was, when I started writing my own songs. I thought I’m doing my own thing here and I’m completely inspired and I’m doing my very best to stay true to the original formats, the original rhythms, the art form. Each style of music has a feeling behind it. To me, now I’ve listened to so much music, there are certain subjects that resonate with certain genres. Just like there’s certain objects that resonate with certain aesthetics. It’s as if you go to an Italian restaurant and there’s soy sauce on the table, you think that’s a bit weird, it doesn’t fit with the folklore, the aesthetic. And in Calypso music, there’s some things about the way people speak and what comes from that, history that resonates with me, one I think is identity, you know. Trinidad has everything there like Indians, Africans, Europeans and me being mixed North European – South European, I somehow identify a lot with that kind of confusion and dealing with that in some way – not in the same way – but in some way, speaks to me.
There’s this great song by Mighty Dougla called “Split Me In Two.” It was about the riots that were happening between the Indians and the Africans in Trinidad.
The chorus goes
Because they sending Indians to India
and the Negroes back to Africa,
Can somebody please just tell me,
where they sending poor me?
I am neither one nor the other,
six of one, half a dozen of the other
If they serious about sending back people for true,
they bound split me in two.
This humour is what I love, that I feel I’m trying to bring. Where they take a situation that’s f***** up, they take oppression, racism, they take whatever the hell it is, and they find a way to talk about it and make light of it, draw attention to it — that unites the people. It’s transforming. It’s alchemy. They transform some injustice, oppression, whatever it is, into something that brings the people together and defuse it. To me, it’s incredible what happens there, and I felt so inspired by that. Somehow when I was here in Portugal, what I was seeing and feeling: the influx of tourism, the lack of immigration regulation, the economic issues, the lack of mixing between the different sectors, the immigrants, the digital nomads, the locals. It just all makes sense with that aesthetic in Portugal.
Everything I wanted to talk about just fit into these calypso essays. When I started writing my own things, there was a very influential guy in my life, Jimbio Vegan [and the Jazz Cannibals]. I got to do a tour with him in Finland, and he was hugely influential on my stage presence. He taught me about playing to an audience, and he said to me, ”Sing from your heart. I don’t know why people try to sing like others, people should just sing their own voice.” And that was when I managed to detach from this idea of singing Calypso with this Caribbean accent.
I feel you’re kind of half way in between, you adapt the intonation to fit the metrics and the rhythm of the song…
Yes, the lilts… the Calypso lilts.
…but it’s not quite a Caribbean accent.
Did you ever get any feedback though?
I have spoken to this amazing steelpan player who lives in Germany [Allan Poteon]. About a year ago, I went on a pilgrimage to see him near Lagos [Algarve]. He brought his steelpan. And I spent two days with this guy, and we’d spent a lot of time messaging, this was gold for me to meet a working musician from Trinidad to listen to what I do, I don’t know if anyone even likes it.
We met up in this café, and I took my guitar out and started playing, and he just looked up at me: “Mattia, in 25 years being out of Trinidad, I have never heard anybody do what you do.” He just started laughing with this hearty laugh, that lights up the world: “You shouldn’t be able to do that, you’ve been struck by a bolt of Caribbean lightning when you were a child or something.” He couldn’t believe it (laughs).
I mean, I played a lot of styles and I watched a lot of these documentaries and tried to really learn the groove, because it’s very particular. I haven’t found anyone who can actually do it right, even the great musicians I hired for my album. I played guitar on most of the tunes because they didn’t have the same thing, that just comes from absorbing. If you learn a language, it’s the same. You listen to 5,000 hours of Chinese, you’re gonna pick up some stuff.
At the end of that meeting, he was showing me some stuff. We had the best time ever. He told me all about things. He said some beautifully validated phrases to me. It’s my dream to go to Trinidad. I would love to meet the old guys who are still knocking around that were playing in the ’80s. I would love to learn from them, I would love to, I don’t know, bring my thing there and learn theirs.
But also, one of the things that I love is improvising. Improvising with content. Something that I try to bring to all of my concerts is danger, stepping out of comfort zones. And they have this thing in Calypso, called Extempo, which is at the end of a night when everyone’s hot, everyone’s sung all their songs, they’ve got over their nerves, they all come back on the stage, and they do this kind of battle. I started trying to do this. I’d also heard this in Sardinia in my Dad’s village, they sing these very simple songs, they do it in Portugal, as well.
Man, that’s therapy. All music is, in my opinion, used as therapy. And definitely that album that I wrote was the biggest therapy I’ve ever done in my life. So yeah, it comes from a deep place. I’ve done my homework. I’ve put a lot of work in. Yet, I’m open to hearing other people’s experience of it.
Music is a thing that connects people. There’s two sides to this, you know there’s this thing music without borders, but I don’t think that’s where life changing music comes from. When there’s a scene, and I’ve made a particular point, when I recorded this album of only using local musicians, only writing about local issues. Yeah, I learned Calypso from intellectual property, which is a bit weird. But that was my fusion, I tried to be very true to the style, and I’ve also tried to be very true to my experience, and I think it’s shared by a lot of people. So, we’ll see. I’m open to things. I have hopes and dreams, and I’m also open to things going a different way.
On the tracklist of the album, “Digital Nomads” has two takes included. Why?
I want to bring back live music, where there’s no computer involved. It’s from the soul of whoever’s there in the moment. A lot of the music that inspires me is from pre-1960s when they couldn’t overdub, what you hear were the people in the room. Now people can get a musician on Fiverr, get a producer in Brazil, have a sax player in China and record it whenever the hell they feel like it. I always make a point of doing everything live, even if that means I have to clap instead of playing an instrument. I always want to do that. I did what they do on jazz records, where there’s a couple of takes to show that it was live, and also I was inspired by Calypso music and Mento, which is old reggae folk music from Jamaica where they use the tenor banjo, another instrument that l play a little bit of. I couldn’t decide what instrument to have the melody playing and I wanted to play on the banjo, but I was really stressed. I had to record the album in two days. So, I learnt it on the banjo but also, Diogo Picão, the sax player who is an absolute master — I’m so delighted that he’s on the album — he started playing the melody on the sax and I thought it sounded so sweet. So, when we went to the studio, I said, “Guys, we’re going to do two versions of this. I’ll play on the banjo once, and then we’ll do it on the saxophone.” To show that the music changes, songs are organic. It’s not content. It’s not always played the same. They have a melody, some lyrics, some harmony, but whoever ‘s there on the day…..I wrote the songs with the intention that I could perform them solo, but they could also be played with a band, if I have that luxury.
Even the album name, A Portrait of Lisbon, is a nod to Bill Evans, one of my favourite jazz musicians. He wrote an iconic album, A Portrait In Jazz. Also, there’s a very famous calypso, “Portrait of Trinidad” [by Mighty Sniper].
What about Track 12: “Feira da Ladra”, which has a hidden track. Was it recorded there?
Yes, I spent a few hours walking around Feira da Ladra, with headphones on and a zoom recorder, recording some street musicians that happened to be there on the day, recording the market traders, there was a samba practice in the park, and I just chatted to some of the people that I know.
The guy who mixed the album took my notes and sort of blended the different scenes into each other, because I wanted all the songs to have a sample and I wanted to show the reality of life. There is a freaking amazing guy [Emory Cook] who in the ’50s or the ’60s took a tape recorder around loads of places in loco in Trinidad and he recorded some of the original calypsonians live, seascapes, he recorded carnival, you can hear the people walking past in stereo. And I was really inspired by that, because I found that audio, much more than video, touches me — if I listen to just the audio of carnival, I can tune in way more and imagine things in my mind and feel it in a different way to when it’s spelled out with video. I was so inspired by this guy’s work that I would like to in some way emulate what he did, which was why I put in all the recordings from my smartphone.
Your live performances have that element of banter with the audience. Basically, you can’t help it, I feel like it’s a strong impulse that you have. Were you ever tempted by stand-up comedy or anything similar?
The whole talking thing, I felt very self-conscious about it at the beginning. I wondered Should I just play? But I kind of wanted to give people the context of the songs a little bit. Also playing in these open mics where the audience can be a bit rowdy, I kind of have to create the space first and a bit of connection with the people before. The conditions for playing in open mics — long five-minute songs are not ideal. People are used to, these days, hearing short pop songs, so to really create a space where I can talk, tell a story, I need people’s attention. I set some contexts, expectations.
A lot of people say I should try stand-up comedy. In my mind, the songs are not funny. They are joyful, and I’m just trying to speak the truth. I’m just trying to document what I see in Martim Moniz or in the parking situation or in the public transport, I just try and paint a picture of what’s going on and the things that really light up to me, that I find funny or interesting or quirky, such as the details, the facial expressions, the interactions, the human element of it. That’s what I try and capture. And I guess, that’s what people connect to.
I don’t see myself as funny, I just think I’m talking about the truth. But I guess the truth is funny. So, I would like to, I have tried a few comedy mics here, but the scene’s a bit strange and the comedy scene there tends to be this performative element that I don’t really have inside me. I feel I have a more gentle approach of curiosity. What I’m trying to do is liven the spirit and the people. That’s what music used to be before intellectual property, before commercialism. I ask the audience how they’re feeling. I want to know. I want them to be seen. I want to feel entertained when I go on a stage. I don’t want to feel alone. That tends to be a so much more powerful connection.
And people inspire me, listening to how people are feeling on the day, jot something in my mind and maybe I’ll play a different song for them, as opposed to going there and doing a script. If people want a script, they can buy the album or watch a YouTube video. I fundamentally stand up for live music in this, it is special when people get off their ass, don’t watch Netflix, pay five bucks to go and see a show. I fundamentally believe that it should be art and that the thing that should happen there should be unique and not replaceable, because I’m trying to create memories for myself. I’m trying to get the vibrations high, connect with people to make it feel like we’re all co-creating. That to me is a successful concert.
This seems to be a nice drift into defining your artistic vision — what else would you add about this?
What I tried to do — as to me, the music scene and the city, the Feng Shui of the cities is very ill. Through the influx of tourists, the city doesn’t have much of a soul anymore. I wanted to write something that would unite the people, and this is kind of my existential crisis. Having Sardinian and English roots, I was exposed from a very young age to two completely different cultures and I saw how it’s uncomfortable for people to step out of their comfort zone, but what they say is all the amazing things in life happen when you step outside your comfort zone. Music — having real artists in a city — is in my eyes one of the things that lubricates this mingling. I tried to write songs that everybody could relate to, whether you’re a tourist that’s been here for a month, whether you’re an Erasmus student that’s here for three months, whether you’re a Lisbon local, whether you are an immigrant. I tried to write about things that are real, that would bring people to my concerts and encourage this kind of mixing of people, create conversations.
Ph.: Eduardo da Paz
What’s next?
I’d like to promote the album a little bit. Try and do some touring. So yeah, I’d like to get the album out a little bit. I will release a few songs on Spotify. I have a book of stories about Lisbon that I wrote which I’ll have to crowdfund or find a publisher or someone to help me with that.
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