Tó Trips & Fake Latinos

(pt)

Portugal has a complicated relationship with its own Latin identity. It is Latin in language, history and temperament, yet has always felt somewhat on the fringes of the other Latin nations, more restrained, more nostalgic, more averse to the exuberance that Brazil, Colombia or Cuba display without a second thought. It is in this uncomfortable space, between what we are and what we deny being, that Tó Trips has always lived: a guitarist from Greater Lisbon who never settled for Lisbon, who always had one foot in and one foot out, and who chose to name his new band after a contradiction: Fake Latinos.

With this new quartet, he opens a new chapter where music is ‘dissidence’ against the obvious, a journey between what we were and what we are yet to be. Joining him on this latest journey are Alexandre Frazão on drums, António Quintino on double bass and Helena Espvall on cello. A band that evokes the sonic migrations of the Portuguese-speaking world, from Brazil to Cape Verde, via Spain and Latin America, celebrating cultural fusion as a living force.

Tó Trips has nearly four decades of experience on the guitar. A rare case in Portuguese music of benign resilience and constant inventiveness. He began with Amen Sacristi, then moved on to Lulu Blind and Dead Combo, the band he founded in 2003 with double bassist Pedro Gonçalves and which, for sixteen years, created instrumental compositions marked by rock, the blues and Portuguese tradition, with influences extending to Africa and Latin America.

In 2025, whilst on the road on yet another imaginary musical journey dubbed Club Makumba, he released Dissidente as a quartet with the Fake Latinos. The name is a nod both to Portugal’s peripheral Latin heritage and to the condition of being an outsider within the tradition itself. The album has sixteen tracks and a map stretching from Havana to Alfama, from the East Village to the Tagus river, from Chet Baker to Jack Kerouac, whose voice appears on a loop in one of the songs, talking about roads and escapes whilst the music unfolds slowly in the background. It is an album of places and ghosts.

Med is a place Tó Trips knows well. Having performed there solo, with Dead Combo on two occasions, and with Club Makumba in 2025, he now returns with yet another chapter in this long refusal to stay still.