About Us

Mário Estanislau     (Born in 1975)     

    … was born at Torres Vedras, where he completed the 12 th year as a student of Professional Mechanic Maintenance. He spent all his childhood at Maceira, where he still lives. He is the youngest of three brothers. Mário started listening to protest music and Portuguese Pop music influenced by his elder brother. Between 1994 and 1995, Mário was in the Army and in 1996 he started to work as a mechanical turner and later on as a mould blacksmith. He built his first musical instrument , a classical guitar, at the age of 15.
Later on, he made a “ cavaquinho” and a mandolin, trying to develop Miguel Rodrigues’ techniques, a maker of string instruments in his area.
    When Mário was about 22 years old, he started learning how to play “cavaquinho” in a cultural society, and made his first bagpipe. The first bagpipe plans he got were given by Joaquim António Silva (Quitó).

    Mário Estanislau founded and played in “Sons da Terra”, a band of Portuguese popular music, between 1997 and 2000.

    In 1999 he got in touch with Paulo Marinho and Victor Félix, with the purpose of improving the making of the bagpipe. First as an apprentice and then as a collaborator, his professional experience was of great value to the making of instruments in his workshop. Nowadays he is dedicated, together with Victor Félix, mainly, to making musical instruments, such as bagpipes, Portuguese guitars, mandolins, “cavaquinhos”, the Portuguese Hurdy-Gurdy and other reed pipes. In 2003, he joined Gaitafolia – a bagpipe band where he still plays.
Mário is a composer and some of his music is part of Gaitafolia’s repertoire.

    Since 2002, through A.P.P.E.D.G.F.* , together with Victor Félix, he has taken part in the international meeting of makers of traditional music instruments, at Saint Chartier (France). He regularly promotes workshops with the purpose of making and learning the Portuguese popular instruments of which we can mention several workshops about the reed instrument, at Beira-Baixa, in 2003 and 2004.

*A.P.P.E.D.G.F. – Portuguese Association for the Study and Spread of the Bagpipe.

Victor Manuel Félix Tavares (Born in 1952)

    Born at Baixa da Banheira, Moita, where attended school and completed the 6 th year. His mother was born at Ribeira de Arouca, Freixo de Mizarela, a small place near Manhouce (Viseu). His father came from Póvoa, Vale de Cambra, and worked for Barreiro CUF. In his spare time he played the guitar and the harmonica and also enlivened public balls. In the evenings, the family used to meet and make music. His mother used to sing, following her husband, who was playing. At the age of 13, Victor was given his first guitar: a gift from his father. He joined the Navy when he was 17 and spent four years there, from 1969 to 1973. In 1960 started visiting some cultural associations on the south bank of the river Tagus, where Zeca Afonso often came, like “o Luso” in Barreiro, the gymnasium of Baixa da Banheira or the Academy at Alhos Vedros. The political situation of Portugal was lively debated in those places and, simultaneously, a new musical style, known as protest music, was born.

    Victor Félix got married and had two children.

    In 1968, he was one of the founders of pop music bands like “Albatroz”, “Oficina de Música” and “Rondo” where he played cordophones.

    In 1993, he started working in a printing office and, in his spare time, made cordophones , between his 25 and 44 years of age. In the nineties he met Paulo Marinho. Victor started learning how to play the bagpipe at the Galician Centre in Lisbon. In 1998, he became a member of “Gaitafolia” band and, one year later, founder of A.P.P.E.D.G.F.. At the age of 50, Victor Félix, with the help of Paulo Marinho, started making the Galician bagpipe. In Galicia, at the Popular University of Vigo, he met Antonio Corral, an artisan of instruments, who taught him some of the techniques of bagpipe making. Between 2003 and 2005 he was the chairman of A.P.P.E.D.G.F. .
At the present time, Victor is a full time maker of pop music instruments, specially Portuguese guitars, “cavaquinhos”, mandolins, banjos, Galician and Mirandese bagpipes, Portuguese Hurdy-Gurdies and several other aerophones.
Together with Mário Estanislau, and A.P.P.E.D.G.F., a standardized Mirandese bagpipe was developed , after studying a reasonable number of 20 th century bagpipes and listening to music gatherings held on the second half of the century.
Victor still plays with “Gaitafolia”. He has participated, since 2002, in the international meeting of instrument makers at Saint Chartier, France, and has been all over the country, mainly in Beira-Baixa, where he made workshops, concerning the musical instrument called the reed.

sonsdamusica@sapo.pt