Nuno Mindelis

In 1998, Nuno Mindelis was considered the world’s best blues guitarist by Guitar Player magazine in its 30th year edition, a feat for an Angolan / Brazilian musician. In addition, he played and recorded with great names of the blues and played in the most important festivals of the genre throughout its career. Awesome, of course, but I always get annoyed when it comes to such a great musician just citing his most remarkable achievements. What should be commented when talking about Nuno Mindelis is that he’s a guitar monster and his concerts should be attended by anyone who likes guitar, blues or good music in general.

Backed by bassist Bruno Falcão, drummer Fred Barley (from progressive Brazilian band O Terço) and keyboardist Flávio Naves, Mindelis opened the show at full speed with “Hugs” from the great Texas Bound, the album he recorded in 1996 with blues legends Double Trouble and other big names of American blues. The band kept the pace for the next songs, showing they weren’t there to save energy with a drum solo by Fred Barley already in the third song.

Nuno’s ability with the guitar is really impressive. He gets many different tones and effects using just the volume and tone controls and changing the order of guitar pickups most of the time. Another component of his personal timbre is not using a pick, true to “the sound is in the fingers” principle.
But sensational, I must say, it’s his exuberant phrasing.

Nuno said during the concert that at the age of 9 he was trying to get the solos out of B. B. King records by note, but his solos didn’t look like a collage of riffs and cliches that he copied from the great masters of the genre. The blues is essentially improvisational music and Mindelis do this all the time, mixing his influences to his personal style with a jaw-dropping sense of rhythm.

I am always happy to see a live band having fun while “at work” and this concert sat among the most memorable on this. Flávio Naves is an excellent instrumentalist, but it isn’t every day we see a keyboard player taking the keyboard from its stand to play holding it on his lap. We’re talking about a SHOW, here, people.

After a perfect set, in which Nuno Mindelis even walked through the audience playing his guitar, he and the band returned for the encore and, surprisingly (for me), they played the Stones’ “Brown Sugar”. And that was it.

Or not. Touched by all the aplause and praising from the audience, Nuno returned to the stage once more to pick up the guitar and- alone -play “Sweet Home Chicago”. The guys of the band then came back to finish the song.

It is easy to find Nuno Mindelis’ stuff on the Internet. His official website has a lot of information about his career and is a good place to listen to his entire discography. The guitar player also frequently updates his Facebook page (in Portuguese), which also has his upcoming shows, photos and videos.

Who wants to get an idea of ​​how good is one of his concerts, however, can start by the concert recorded by Trama record label. From this concert, the performances of “In trouble” and “I know what you want” are pure blues gems, the latter with more than ten minutes (!) and an amazing guitar solo starting at 6'45".

Finally, for more photos of this concert, click here to see an album in my Flickr account.