Tomás Gomes aka Tomy de Paula is a Portuguese guitarist and composer from Lisbon whose work ventures to re-enchant Portuguese folk music through the perspective of his contemporary and experimental identity.
His work constitutes a musical tapestry where contemporaneity and ancestry coexist in a fused language in which themes of love, spirituality and cultural heritage are explored, reverberating in the lyrics of old Portuguese chants hovering above dissonant harmonies and repetitive cadences.
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MPAGDP (A Música Portuguesa A Gostar Dela Própria)
MPAGDP (Portuguese music enjoying itself) is a project devoted to the digital registration of musical practices, oral tradition and collective memory of Portuguese popular culture.
In 2023, as an intern, I followed them for the first time on one of their incursions to the interior of Portugal. We recorded during easter, in a region known for being one of the richest repositories of Portuguese oral traditions.
I was very struck by this experience and since then, with the generous permission of Tiago Pereira, I have been using many samples from the vast well that this archive constitutes. Furthermore, I have collaborated in two residencies initiated by MPAGDP within the scope of Portuguese Roma music.
Bobo Romo
Bobo Romo is a European quartet formed by by Magdalena Spinka, Konstantin Schreiber, Vos van der Noordt and Tomás Gomes in 2021 while studying at the Utrecht Conservatory.
What began as a shared exploration of music through performance, evolved through the lockdown years, into a distinctive sonic identity built on each member’s unique background and a collective creative process. Their sound blends krautrock, new wave and dream pop into something both familiar and unexpectedly new.
Chiaroscuro
Chiaroscuro, a term dating back to the baroque period adopted to describe the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, is a multi- disciplinary performance debuted in 2023, in which Tomás Gomes ventures to explore the most luminous and somber parts of the self.
Here, the associations of light and dark, are exonerated from their usual positive and negative connotations. They serve as metaphors to represent the known and unknown parts of ourselves. What lays in the light we can see, therefore we know, what stays in the dark, we cannot see, therefore we imagine.
Photography by: Beatriz Oliveira Webdesign: Atelier Niek Laurence
Tomy de Paula © 2026
Tomy de Paula © 2026