Last October, Coimbra’s Convento São Francisco—once a 17th-century monastery, now a landmark cultural venue in Portugal’s historic former capital—hosted MATE, a festival dedicated to music, art, technology and education. The programme celebrated innovation across creative disciplines, but it was the performance by Crua that stood out for its heartening power. With only voices and frame drums, the six-woman group from Porto offered a stark, resonant take on tradition—at once grounded and subtly radical.
It was there, in the midst of the festival’s hustle and bustle, that we met Liliana Abreu—not just one of Crua’s founding members, but also working behind the scenes as MATE’s stage manager. Between soundchecks and show calls, we caught a moment with her to talk about the origins of the group, their ethos, and where the adufe might lead them next.
Crua began in 2019 as an open workshop at Stop, a sprawling, partly abandoned shopping centre in Porto that’s become a grassroots home for independent music. Brought together by a shared fascination with the adufe, a traditional square drum once played mainly by rural women, the group emerged organically; solidified by the isolation of the pandemic, and shaped by a desire to reframe what folk music can be. Their arrangements blend work songs, festive chants and field recordings, all filtered through a collective, contemporary lens.
Today, Crua consists of six women whose voices and percussion form the foundation of their sound: alongside Liliana, there’s Ana Beiradomar, Bárbara Trabulo, Diana Ferreira Martins, Isabel Martinez, and Rita Só. Each brings her own background and sensibility, but together they operate as a tightly knit ensemble: one that weaves together field recordings, work songs, festive chants, and raw percussion into something both ancient and strikingly new.
At MATE, they brought this approach with striking clarity. More than recreating the past, their music reclaims it, retools it, and opens it up to new meanings. What Crua builds on stage is less a concert than a kind of shared ritual, one rooted in the rhythm of hands on skin, and in the quiet determined force of six women choosing to speak and sing, together, in a language older than memory.
“We’re not women from the villages. We’re not women who worked the land, we’re city women of 2023, and that matters to us,” Liliana asserts, her words echoing the group’s ethos.
Crua’s genesis traces back to 2019 in Porto, a city that became the crucible for their collective identity. “Only two of us were born there… the rest of us met in Porto,” she recalls. It was within the walls of a space called Stop that an open workshop for adufe and singing sowed the seeds of what would become Crua. “Many people came through in Porto, every week, all the time,” she reminisces.
The onset of the pandemic in 2020 brought unforeseen challenges, yet it also forged deeper bonds among the six women. “Sometimes we didn’t even sing: it was just a space to breathe for all of us,” she reflects. This period of introspection and connection laid the groundwork for Crua’s evolution into a cohesive ensemble.
By 2021, the group had crystallised their vision. “We had material ready and we wanted to take it out into the world,” she states. The adufe, central to their music, is more than an instrument; it’s a vessel of exploration. “The adufe is an unlimited instrument, I really feel that. And it’s still under-explored,” she enthuses.
Embracing the traditional moniker of adufeiras, the women of Crua infuse the term with contemporary relevance. “What kind of adufeiras are we in Porto? That was the thought and the search—how can we make this instrument our own?” she muses.
Their approach to music is collaborative and organic. “Some of us had never been in a project before, didn’t sing professionally, and others had. But it was also about the feeling that we could do this together,” she explains. This collective spirit extends beyond performance; Crua is self-produced and independent. “Our biggest goal is to take this instrument to many places,” she shares. Workshops precede most of their concerts, offering participants hands-on experience in building and playing the adufe. “We make adufes… building, playing, and doing things with people. That’s a big goal for us.”
Conceptually, Crua’s music defies easy categorisation. “In English, I’d say it’s a challenging experience,” she offers. She describes their style as “empathetic traditional music,” emphasising the adaptability of traditional forms to convey contemporary messages. “Traditional music… is a great way to talk about other things. So the choice of lyrics, or changing lyrics, is very tied to the message we want to convey.”
Internally, the group navigates the complexities of collective decision-making. “We’re still figuring out how to do things. We all do everything,” Liliana notes. This egalitarian approach mirrors their musical philosophy, where songs are reimagined and rearranged to reflect their unique voice. “Some of the songs came from the workshop, but we decided to rearrange them,” she says, citing influences like the Grupo de Ação Cultural from the 1970s.
At its core, Crua is an exploration: “The adufe is our guide,” she says. “That’s the starting point: where can this instrument take us?”
“We didn’t want to abandon what we’d developed in the workshops. So we started asking: what’s missing in order to tell a story in concert?” she explains. “We began thinking about what was missing in order to tell a story through the concert experience. It’s about communication again. When I’m singing to you, how can I tell you something?”
Crua’s repertoire is a tapestry woven from various threads of Iberian traditional music. “We try to show various expressions of traditional music — at least Iberian ones. Work songs, party songs, harvest songs. We want to bring in all of these messages, because each of them has different lyrics and a different way of communicating.”
Their focus on songs of women spans regions: “From Portugal, Galicia, Extremadura. It’s Iberian, but not limited to Iberia. For now, it’s Iberian.”
Addressing the dynamics of being an all-female group, she reflects: “I work with a group of men — a band of ten men [Criatura] — not as a singer, but on the technical side. And no one ever asks them why they’re ten men, or what challenges they face being ten men. But with Crua, the question about being six women — why, how do we feel about it — that comes up all the time. I think that already says a lot.”
She continues: “We have very little female representation in music. And in traditional music, it’s even more pronounced. We do sometimes face difficulties — particularly with technical teams or when we arrive at venues — though less and less now. But it’s still worth reflecting on, because we didn’t choose to be six women. It just happened, it was coincidence. But by now, it’s not unconscious: we want these six women to step forward so we can talk about this directly.”
“I think the biggest challenge is actually getting people to stop focusing on our gender. That’s it. That’s the real challenge — to be seen simply as six people.”
Discussing the rigidity often found in traditional music scenes, she says: “The last piece we played is a moda alentejana, a traditional song from the Alentejo. It’s called ‘Cocorô’. We were in Évora last year for the first time, in a theatre with a decent audience. And we were panicking, because the big names from the traditional singing scene were there.”
They had reimagined the lyrics: “The original is about a beautiful woman who wants to get married. And we rewrote it to say she’s going out to harvest love with her hands — and she’s not beautiful, she’s fierce.”
Despite initial apprehensions, the response was positive: “We thought, okay, brave it is. We were panicking, thinking it would go badly, we’d get criticised. Of course, we expected that kind of clash. But actually, to this day, and we’ve performed with many groups, we’ve never had any issues.”
“So maybe our music isn’t as disruptive as it seems?”
She offers another anecdote: “There’s a song we didn’t sing today called ‘A Moleira.’ It was taught to us by a group of adufeiras. They heard our version and loved it. It didn’t bother them at all.”
“We’ve generally had a good reception from the communities we draw from. So far, I’ve never had any complaints.”
On connecting with younger audiences: “I think it’s different because of how we play it. Young people aren’t really exposed to it. Well, it’s hard to generalise, but yeah — they’re not usually the first to turn up at a traditional concert.”
“What helps, I think, is how close and accessible we make it. We’re talking about the same things as everyone else, just in a different format. That’s the key. Traditional music is one of the best vehicles for communication. And once you break that barrier, that prejudice… The fact that we dress like modern women, like city women, that’s a visual connection, a shared code. I think that helps. And it’s fascinating: most of the younger people who come to our shows by chance… most of them end up crying. It’s something cathartic. At that point, no one’s thinking ‘is this traditional music or not?’ It’s a niche space — it’s not easy — but I feel like more and more young people are connecting. And the adufe is in fashion in Portugal, recently.”
On scenography and innovation: “Yes, yes, absolutely. Lots of people involved — young people — bringing in various musical styles. We’ve been developing different types of tuning to be able to work with.”
“Yes, these are real skin,” she confirms of the adufe. “But you can get synthetic ones too — a bit lighter, even a bit more Galician in character. And you can make them from plastic, which gives a different sound. I have a friend who’s trying to make one with a 3D printer. So, that tells you the instrument is evolving. It’s going to sound — well, not yet. Still in testing.”
“Exactly. Older people too — it’s much lighter. As long as it produces sound. If the instrument is alive and changing, then it’s contemporary. We’re exploring the meaning of the instrument.”
“Yes — absolutely,” she says when asked about the instrument’s ritual roots. “Traditionally it was only played by women, often during festivals and pilgrimages. It often helped them through difficult journeys… So it’s really about entering a kind of trance state. In that ritualistic context, you can keep going.”
“That’s why traditional rhythms are often very linear — they take you into a steady state. It becomes a shared ritual journey.”
Looking to the future, Liliana is enthusiastic: “Next year, we plan to do cine-concerts — live music with film… We’ve been working on video pieces about Porto, and we’d like to compose music for them. It’s about connecting the city to the language usually reserved for the countryside, breaking down those barriers.”
“The cine-concerts are coming in March. We’re also planning to release an album — hopefully late 2024 or into 2025. We’re doing it independently and taking our time, deliberately.”
“We’ve also got two big projects involving a lot of people next year. One of them combines instrument-building, participation and collective concerts. This idea of collective concerts, cine-concerts, playing in public squares and auditoriums — that’s what we want to keep doing.”
And how to describe Crua to someone unfamiliar?
“I think Crua can touch the place where your mother’s lullaby used to live. You don’t remember the song, do you? Not the melody. But there’s a space that, if you heard it today, would still move you. We won’t sing that lullaby, but we can still reach that space.”
She closes with the spirit behind the name: “Crua mean raw… The idea of a primal state. Before cooking. Because all of the instruments are traditional. That’s what it is. A return to something primal.”
Step into Crua’s raw, primal musical world via their website, Instagram and Youtube channel
Photo ©: MATE Festival