Portugal: Interview with Jonas | From Eurovision 2008 to Festival da Canção 2022! (Video)

After the announcement of his candidacy for this year’s portuguese national final, Festival da Canção 2022, Jonas speaks exclusively to EurovisionFun‘s Apostolos Bogiannos and Paschalis Barmpoutis.

Jonas is one of the candidates of the portuguese national final for the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 and will try to represent his country with the song “Pontas Soltas”.

I’m releasing an album. I’m starting now. I did musical theater, but my main thing is being a fado singer. It feels like I’m beginning again after all these years. It’s an opportunity for people to know about my music.
Pontas soltas is a protuguese expression about something unsolved. It’s about a relationship that ended in the wrong leaving many issues to be solved. It’s a recurring theme in fado music. This kind of music has mysticism. The song was written especially for FdC and I was invited by RTP to participate.

Apart from being a singer, Jonas is also a choreographer. This is something that can help him with his staging in the national final:

I can’t say much about my staging. It’s a surprise. It’s very connected with fado and with dance. I’m very nervous to be compared to other artists. I’m trying not to see anything on the Internet. I like everything to be united and not seen separately.

Despite being anxious by the procedure, Jonas has already some favorites among the festival’s songs. He prefers the songs by Pongo & Tristany and Milhanas.

FdC changed a lot after the victory of Salvador Sobral. Salvador Sobral was an unusual phenomenon in ESC. Noone expected a very simple and fragile song with just him alone on stage would win. It’s good to see all these different styles and songs. It’s much richer now with huge names of the portuguese music, it gives me more will to participate in FdC.

His favorite portuguese entry is “Desfolhada” by Simone de Oliveira (1969) and of course “Senhora do mar” by Vânia Fernandes (2008), where he participated as a back vocalist. Among other Eurovision entries he likes Netta‘s song (Israel 2018).

Being a back vocalist in the portuguese entry in 2008, Jonas spoke about his experience in the contest and about their pleasant coexistence with the greek delegation.

Just before the end of the interview, Jonas sang a part of his song a capella for the readers of eurovisionfun.

Watch the whole interview with Jonas in the video that follows: