We begin our Madeira’s Many Muses series with one of the island’s most beloved voices: Napa.
Born on Madeira, the band’s rise to wider recognition came when they represented Portugal at the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest with Deslocado; a song about distance, displacement, and the quiet pull of home. Longing, not as sadness, but as something deeply human.
We meet Guilherme in a local bar. He greets us with a smile and insists on buying coffee: a bica, strong and short, just as it should be.
“Proost,” Pien says instinctively. “Saúde,” Guilherme replies, laughing, a small moment where cultures meet.
Later, Guilherme plays Deslocado for us. He explains how the song was written from a feeling many Madeirans know well: loving the island so deeply that leaving it never really means leaving at all.
We follow him from the sea, near the place where he first made music in the basement of his grandmother’s house, up into the mountains, high above the clouds.
When we arrive, the landscape opens into something almost unreal. Mist drapes softly over the valley, the world below fading into silence. Up here, everything slows.“This is where I come when I need quiet,” Guilherme tells us. “This is where I find inspiration.”
Standing above the island, it feels like being inside the music itself; distant from the noise, closer to what matters. Madeira reveals itself not loudly, but patiently. We feel lucky to have been guided here, somewhere we would never have found on our own.
This is what contemporary Madeiran music offers: something that transcends language and geography.
Napa doesn’t just sound like Madeira — it feels like it.
