The Song Born from Stone: The Journey of “Canto de Xisto”
Where are songs born?
It’s a question I constantly ask myself as an artist. Songs can be born from love, from loss, from a sudden joy, or from a sleepless night. But “Canto de Xisto” wasn’t born from any of those things. It was born from the ground I walk on, the air I breathe, and the heavy, wise silence of a land that shaped me: Trás-os-Montes.
This song, and the video that accompanies it, are not just a project. They are a homecoming. An attempt to translate into sound and image the complex soul of a place that is, at once, one of the harshest and most beautiful in the world. Today, I want to open the doors to this journey and tell you the story behind the song.
The Sound of a Land: How Do You Set Silence and Resilience to Music?
The initial idea wasn’t to write a song about Trás-os-Montes. It was to try and answer a deeper question: “What is the sound of this land?” Trás-os-Montes is defined by dualities. It is the land of “nine months of winter and three months of hell,” where the “sun burns the rock and the winter punishes.” It is the land of the deep silence of the mountains, but also of the stories shared around the warmth of the hearth.
How could this be turned into music? My first decision was to step away from the obvious. Instead of relying solely on traditional folk instrumentation, I felt that the true essence of Trás-os-Montes today is resilience. It is a constant pulse, an unyielding strength. And for me, the best way to represent that tirelessly beating heart was through a hypnotic, deep electronic beat. The beat in “Canto de Xisto” isn’t a dance beat; it’s the sound of steady footsteps on the earth, the rhythm of unending work, the pulse of life that insists on blooming against all odds.
Upon this modern foundation, the voice and the melody had to be the ancestral soul. They had to carry the weight of saudade, the melancholy of the “ancient sorrow” that the shepherd carries with him, but also the tenderness and strength of the community. The voice is the “canto” (the song), and the beat is the “xisto” (the schist rock)—one is born from the other, the organic emerges from the solid.
The Vision: Painting Memories with Light and Artificial Intelligence
When I started thinking about the video, I knew I didn’t want a traditional music video. I wanted a visual poem. I wanted every image to be a verse, a painting that would deepen the meaning of the lyrics.
Some of these images were clear in my mind: me, atop the mountains, feeling the vastness; the shepherd guiding his flock at sunset. But how do you film a feeling? How do you capture a memory?
This is where I made one of the most important decisions of the project: to use artificial intelligence (Midjourney) not as a substitute for reality, but as a tool to access a collective dream. I used AI as a brush to paint memories that we all share but that no one ever photographed. The close-up of an elder’s eye that holds centuries of stories; the hands kneading bread as a symbol of sustenance; the children running as the promise of the future—these are not images of specific people, they are archetypes of the transmontana soul.
The fusion of these generated images, which feel like they’ve emerged from a dream, with my own real footage, created the visual texture I was looking for: a constant dialogue between the real and the symbolic, between the present and the eternal. The color grading, with its warm, earthy tones, was the final stitch, ensuring everything belonged to the same universe, to the same golden, melancholic light.
The Lyrics: A Map of Sensations
Every word in “Canto de Xisto” was chosen with the precision of someone describing their own home. The lyrics are a sensory journey:
“Ó montes, meus montes, de xisto e de pão” (Oh mountains, my mountains, of schist and of bread): Geology and sustenance. The foundation of everything.
“Na aldeia pequena cai a noite escura, cheira a fumo de lenha, à sopa que apura” (In the small village the dark night falls, smelling of firewood smoke, of the simmering soup): The comfort of home, the scent that welcomes us and tells us we are safe.
“O som do chocalho, que o tempo não cala, é a voz desta terra que chora e que fala” (The sound of the cowbell, which time cannot silence, is the voice of this land that weeps and that speaks): The region’s soundtrack, transformed into a metaphor for its own voice—a voice that expresses both its sorrow and its stubborn, continuous existence.
And, of course, the two verses that are the heart of the entire song. “Terra de silêncio, de vento e de fé” (Land of silence, of wind and of faith) is the definition of the place’s soul. The silence of the vastness, the wind that shapes the landscape and its people, and the faith—not just religious, but faith in the land, in the community, and in the ability to endure.
To this, the promise responds: “Trás-os-Montes, meu berço, hei-de ter-te de pé.” (Trás-os-Montes, my cradle, I will keep you standing.). It’s more than a play on words. It is a pact. A commitment to honor one’s origins and to fight so that this identity, this culture, and this strength are never lost.
A Song for the World
In the end, “Canto de Xisto” became more than I had imagined. It is a love letter to my homeland, yes, but I hope it is also a window for those who do not know it. I hope that by listening to the music and watching the video, you feel what I feel: that even in the most silent and forgotten places, there is an immense beauty and a strength that can inspire us all.
This is my song. But now, it is also yours. Thank you for listening.
With all my soul,
Glender