In October of 2015, he integrated the cast of the show AMÁLIA - Não sei porque te foste embora, in Coliseu do Porto. He has only 23 years and in the elegant cover of his debut album appears in a black and white photo, behind a glass with white streaks that overlap his face. In the interior, the album has a text signed by Camané that lists some of fado's features and by the end says: " All of this truths, that fadistas learn to sing and feel are gathered in this Miguel Xavier first album, born in Guimarães and who became a fadista." Not just him. There is another text, signed by Ricardo Pais, where he recalls what he felt for the first time when he listened to Miguel Xavier, who by the time had 19 years. " I was so stunned as when i listened to Camané with same or more age"
Born in Guimarães, at april’s 17th 1995, it was the contact with his grandmother, also from Guimarães, that took Miguel’s attention to fado. His parents also listened to music, but not as much. “That contact with my grandmother was essential. She was a very modern women to her age and time, and she listened to a lot of music. And from the music she heard, I don’t know why but the one who impressed me the most was fado. Not by the meaning of words, because I was little and couldn’t understand, but by the feeling and the expression that each fadista sang with”. And he could distinguish them. “Besides being the same musics, sometimes even the same fados, each one had its ways of singin. And that fascinated me”.

Miguel can’t remember very well the first time he sang a fado. “My grandmother had a very beautiful voice, when she was young all of her family sang (grandparents, parents, sisters, my great grandfather was a popular poet), and he sang a lot. And I, from listening to her, started singing. I don’t know for sure the age, but I was really little”. At the age of 14, it is written in his short biography that he sang for the first time with guitar and viola. And that he remembers well. “It was when my parents started spending vacation in Vila do Conde. Some of their friends went to a “fado vadio” house, and in one of the partys that they gave in our home, they asked my parents to take me to that fado house. And that was the first time that I sang with guitar and viola. One fado that my grandmother sang and that I really liked: “A Lenda das Algas, from Celeste Rodrigues”

It happened that in that night “was there a man that played viola natural from Vila do Conde that had a group of fados”, says Miguel. “And that viola asked me to take there my father in the next week, to ask him for permission for me to join the group of his fados. So, from 14 to 17, I sang with that group every week, Fridays, Saturdays and sometimes Sundays”. Later, Miguel was still in school, that viola went to replace a musician in a professional house of fado in Porto. “I remember the enchantment that it took on me, seeing the fadista walk in, the way the light went out, how the fado was sung in there and that way, to me it was all new”. It was in there that Miguel Xavier met Miguel Amaral, musician and guitarra portuguesa player, born in Porto in 1982, also precocious with the music contact (studied piano at 6 years, and then guitarra portuguesa, starting as a professional in 2005). And when he met him, was there that Miguel started to think of being a professional. Had 18 years.

Meanwhile, Miguel Amaral asked him to participate in a amateur fado contest. “It was the contest of Lordelo do Ouro and Massarelos, that already had enough tradition in Porto. I thought: one more adventure, why not? I did the playoffs, and when I got to the final, I won.” Since the contest numerous invitations came off, and being him in the final of studies, without being sure if he wanted to go to university, he decided by fado. Miguel started singing professionally in Porto and moved to Vila do Conde, where he currently lives. First, he sang in Casa da Mariquinhas, did some other nights in other houses, and now he is in Mal Cozinhado.

Without being in fado houses, he stepped another stages, such as Sala 2 of Casa da Música, in Porto, 2017, presenting himself in the same year in Festival Caixa Alfama, Lisbon.

 The debut album of Miguel Xavier, whose title has only his name, appeared by Miguel Amaral suggestions. “He suggested that to me, and later, convinced me. I had many doubts, because I have the consciousness that recording a fado album is a big responsibility. And I didn’t knew if I was capable of it”. But he did end up recording it, in Porto, in May 2017, although it was launched in 2018. With Miguel Xavier (voice), in the studio were only three musicians, who sign the disk arrangements together: Miguel Amaral (Portuguese guitar), André Teixeira (fado viola), and Filipe Teixeira (contrabass), the same who will be in the Villaret stage. The production and musical direction are from the musician that convinced him to record: Miguel Amaral.

 “When we started”, says Miguel Xavier, “I knew that were some fados that I wanted to record and that make part of the fadistas repertoire that serve as my reference, like “Fui de viela em viela from Alfredo Marceneiro (Fado Cravo)” or “Fado Raúl Pinto, here with the lyrics from Manuela de Freitas (Disse-te adeus)”. But we started also creating my repertoire, because one of the things I always heard from the oldest fadistas, saying that in their time they had to sing their own repertoire”. That’s how, he says, started to emerge traditional structure poems (in quintiles, sextiles, decyllables). “And Miguel Amaral started to create some, free form. He and André Teixeira started to create some new traditional fados, for the record”.

Between the originals, there are three poems from Alexandre O’Neills, played by Filipe Teixeira, Carlos Teixeira and Luís Figueiredo: “Soneto Inglês” (first song on the album), “O Tejo corre no Tejo”, and the penultimate song from the 15 that were recorded, “Um Carnaval”. Note that there are no family relationships between the 3 Teixeiras that appear on the record: “it’s just the name”.

There is also a fado with song by Mário Laginha, “Graças de Lisboa”, with lyrics by António Vilar da Costa. “Miguel Amaral had popular poets colections, with poems recorded only a few times, or even forgotten. And that song, although its from a former popular poet, it is still current today. And Miguel Amaral had the intelligence, and the friendship to ask Mário Laginha to compose a traditional fado for him”. But there are some new lyrics, like the new one that the young fadista Marco Oliveira wrote, “Nenhum de nós”, song for which Miguel Amaral wrote a fado that called Alexandrino do Amaral.

Miguel Xavier debut album has already been presented this year, in Porto, at Mosteiro de São Bento da Vitória. It was on the Mundial Music Day, 1st October. Now at Teatro Villaret, also with Nuno Carinhas staging, Miguel will join to the album fados some others that has been singing since the beginning of his career. “It will have almost every fado on this album, but there will be some others too, like “Fado Rosita” (from Joaquim Campos), with a poem by David Mourão-Ferreira, whose was part of Maria do Rosário Bettencourt repertoire; a fado that I sing every day, for a long time “Quatro Estações”. The space is different, because it’s a room and not a cloister, but the motto and the aesthetic idea are the same ones who presided over the show at Mosteiro de São Bento da Vitória”.

The way Miguel Xavier sings today, beyond the auditions still in child, is marked by several phases. “Some names I bring with me since a child, like the ones my grandmother had me listening in her home, Amália Rodrigues and Alfredo Marceneiro. Then, as I grew up, I was searching even more fadistas, more fados, and trying to realize what is this so simple world, but at the same time so complex”. And he started creating his references, like António Rocha (from Lisbon, born in 1938): “It was from the first masculine voices that appeared to me and today are still with me. People say I have very stuff from him. Later, Manuel de Almeida. Then, from the new generation, by the way I started singing, Camané and Ricardo Ribeiro. These are my references”.