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Buy The Intercessor<\/em> paperback or ebook from Amazon<\/a>, Barnes & Noble<\/a>, Bookshop.org<\/a>, or Ingram<\/a>! <\/strong> <\/p>\n NOTE<\/strong>: This post is to introduce you to the 66th episode of Fran\u00e7ois Matarasso\u2019s and my monthly podcast, \u201cA Culture of Possibility.\u201d This episode will be available starting 17 July 2026. You can find it and all episodes at iTunes<\/a>, and wherever you get your podcasts, along with miaaw.net<\/a>\u2018s other podcasts by Owen Kelly, Sophie Hope, and many guests, focusing on cultural democracy and related topics. You can also listen on Podbean<\/a> and find links to accompany the podcasts. <\/em><\/p>\n I had the pleasure of meeting Paulo Lameiro in Rotterdam this spring at the International Community Arts Festival<\/strong>, where Fran\u00e7ois and I presented workshops and attended many events. Fran\u00e7ois has known him for years, and they\u2019ve worked together on the co-created opera Traction project<\/a> and other international music-based projects. <\/p>\n Paulo is a Portuguese musician, musicologist, educator and artistic director<\/strong>, one of those people who exudes a magnetic enthusiasm, which I\u2019m sure has been a tremendous asset in his work. He\u2019s based in Leiria, a small city in central Portugal, where he was born. We asked him to be on the podcast to share his enthusiasm with you, and agreed that the best way in was to learn more about Concerts for Babies<\/a>, a project he has been developing for three decades. <\/p>\n We asked Paulo to tell a bit about how he came to do his work<\/strong>. His answer will resonate with many community artists who discovered themselves through making art. <\/p>\n \u201cLike every boy in this village, I entered in the community band, playing flugelhorn at eight years old. This moment affected all of my work, and in fact, it\u2019s the reason you invited me to be here with you. Everything that I do nowadays I learned in my band. I will say three things about that. <\/p>\n \u201cFirst, the band accepted all ages, little boys like me and old people together, playing in the same level, respecting themselves in the same way. Second, the people who belong to the band are in a social way very diverse. We even have people that don\u2019t know to write as well as academic teachers. Third, and I think it\u2019s the most important, we don\u2019t play music for a public in a concert room. We play for the community outside. We play in squares, in gardens, in churches for presidents, dance music for common people. This time of my childhood changed me totally. What I do nowadays, I learned from the band. <\/p>\n \u201cI remember quite well a moment where I was singer in the opera theater in Lisbon<\/strong>, and after one week of performance with the best singers and the best stage director, Pier Luigi Pizzi, the next morning I came to my village to play processions in my band, and I realized I have more pleasure playing my flugelhorn in my band on a mountain with no one, just plants and a few people. But yesterday I\u2019ve been singing in an opera theater. I try to understand why, as a musicologist, I don\u2019t have the same pleasure. The music doesn\u2019t touch me in the same way. That\u2019s the reason why I gave up living in Lisbon and teaching in conservatory and connected in my little hometown Pousos, where we built a school of arts.\u201d<\/p>\n Paulo added that working with teachers, he says that before you talk about scores and instruments, try to know what your students dream, what they are looking for from the music. That inspired Fran\u00e7ois to share a question he likes to ask community artists: \u201c\u2018If you could work on a project that would produce an extraordinary, wonderful piece of art at the end of it, but the people who were involved in it would not be moved or changed by it, or you could work on a project that would be transformative for the people involved, but maybe it wasn\u2019t so interesting artistically, which would you prefer to do?\u2019 Of course everyone says I would do both, but thinking about that question is really useful, because what it\u2019s really about is what do you care about, what really motivates you? As you said, for you and for me, it\u2019s people. Art serves the people. Art without people doesn\u2019t exist, so it has to be that way around. Art is for people, not people for art.\u201d<\/p>\n When Paulo returned to Leiria to work in the music school where he\u2019d been a student, he started working with babies<\/strong>. He told us why and how.<\/p>\n \u201cI believe in the power of babies for three main reasons. First, babies are the greatest experts in learning, so if we want to learn the future, learn love, learn the difficult things\u2014not to do mathematics or build a car or artificial intelligence, but the really meaningful and important things\u2014babies are the best. I love babies because they are masters. The second point is they don\u2019t come alone. Babies come in community. We never talk with just a baby, we never play just for a baby. We receive babies with someone else, the mother, the father, a brother, a sister, grandfather, godfather, godmother, and this is another level you need to communicate with two totally different human beings. If you want to achieve that, you need to improve a lot of abilities, you need to be open, you need to have a lot of tools, so you learn how to manage with communities. And they are in community of love, because it\u2019s totally different when we go to a rock concert with 10 friends, or we go to the concerts for babies, the mothers create expectations, create energies, so there is a lot of special energy, and that\u2019s very, very important. <\/p>\n \u201cThird, when we have a baby in our arms, especially if it\u2019s our baby, but even when it\u2019s not our baby, we are open to others, we are prepared to take care. We forget ourselves, we forget our priorities, we forget money, job, friends, everything. We play, give classes, workshops, make concerts with babies, and create a community of people that are interested in taking care of themselves and of each other.\u201d<\/p>\n You will enjoy hearing Paulo describe the experiences<\/strong> that led him to conclude it was necessary to start musical experience and education much earlier than the conventional approach, and to integrate other art forms. Paulo described how the concerts unfold.<\/p>\n \u201cFirst of all, concerts for babies don\u2019t use children\u2019s music<\/strong>. We use mostly classical music and classical musicians. It\u2019s important to offer the complexity of harmonies of structures, forms. I used to say that in one minute of Bach, or one minute of Wagner, we have all the harmonies of all the pop bands in the world. Second, we use mostly instrumental music, non-vocal. There are no words, no stories. It\u2019s just architecture. Before music, we have sound. All of us human beings, we receive sound vibrations, and for a baby, this is crucial. We play in the center of a stage, we are all around, we have 60 babies with families, which mean 210-250 people on stage around each other. In the center, we have the artists. This is very important, because a baby and the mother don\u2019t look just at a musician or a dancer, they look at 20, 30 other babies, other people, and the music connects us. I used to say that the soloists at the concert are not the musicians, they are the babies, the ones that move, react, the ones that become \u2018Whoa!\u2019 The parents discover that a three or sixth months old baby can be 45 minutes in silence and quieted, listening to Bach, Monteverdi, Schubert. They discover a new baby, a new son, a new daughter. \u2018My baby, what\u2019s this?\u2019 <\/p>\n \u201cThen the pieces of music don\u2019t last five minutes, 20 minutes, or 45 minutes<\/strong>. We have music of 30 seconds to one minute in an hour with contrasts. The baby in the first 30 seconds learns what it\u2019s important to be learned in Mahler, and don\u2019t have time to lose, because the baby needs to learn other things, other people, other dimensions. It\u2019s not that they can\u2019t listen to complex music. They can, but they listen much quicker than us adults. So we have little pieces of music, sometimes arranged from great composers, another times new music written for the concerts.<\/p>\n \u201cWe use some rhythmic and melodic patterns in a way that the parents sing with the professional musicians<\/strong>. For instance, I give to the audience a pattern like this: \u2018Pa, pa, pa!\u2019 Musicians improvise in this big choir of parents, and after this they play Pa, pa, pa!\u2019 I use the rhythmic structure, or melodic structure, or harmonic structure, and I put these elements with all the public, and then the professional artists improvise with this, and we are all doing music. All of us participate in some way, and even the babies participate in this music. Participate doesn\u2019t mean play oboe or play piano, participate is a lot of things, and it\u2019s very, very rich the way they participate.\u201d<\/p>\n Paulo shared a lot more about the concerts and what has been learned from the experience<\/strong>. Then we moved on to other projects, including the Traction co-created opera project, made with people who work or live in prison. The project depended on the support of the Ministries of Justice and Culture, and after the premi\u00e8re in Lisbon, attended by the respective ministers, there was shared singing uniting politicians, inmates, officials, and artists. There\u2019s a wealth of wonderful detail in the interview about this, such as Paulo pointing out that \u201cit\u2019s not only work with inmates. I used to say that the inmates are not the ones that most need the project. Sometimes the mothers, the families outside of prison, need it more because they suffer much more. That\u2019s the reason why we try to work 50% outside of the prison, and when we perform we have mothers and children on stage with them, dancing about, all the community. Ministers and prime ministers and presidents just use art and culture as an ornament, or sometimes a social offering, but they don\u2019t believe in the reason why we as human beings need art. I realized that if you speak with a minister like this, \u2018art is important, art is education,\u2019 you don\u2019t achieve results. You need to invite a minister to sing with you, because just after the minister sings, she realized, \u2018Oh, this transformed me.\u2019 That\u2019s the reason why in all our meetings, even in a press conference, I have my mayor in a press conference, we present the project, and each one at the table needs to sing their name. I have two ministers and one mayor, and just the fact that they sing their names changes the project. Give them this experience, and then if we sing together, we have the project.\u201d<\/p>\n I think you\u2019ll really enjoy this episode.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s a short video<\/a> made for the 25th anniversary of Concerts for Babies.<\/p>\n