Eduardo Nascimento was the singer who won the Festival RTP da Canção on February 25, 1967, still held at Tobis Studios, in Lisbon. With the Rocks debut album released shortly before, the singer was the first singer of a “modern” group to win the event and show Europe that Portugal was also attentive to the best “pop waves” – thanks here to the musician’s talent Nuno Nazareth Fernandes and lyricist João Magalhães Pereira. He became the first performer of African origin in the Eurovision Song Contest, showing that Europe’s richness has always resided in its crossroads of cultures.
Nascimento was the leader of a five-member band, Os Rocks, formed in Luanda in 1962. The band travelled to mainland Portugal in the mid-1960s, participating in song festivals and releasing a well-received EP, “Wish I May”, in 1966. In 1967, Nascimento entered the Portuguese Eurovision selection contest, the Festival da Canção, as a solo artist with the song “O vento mudou” (“The Wind Changed”). He won the event by a comfortable margin, and went forward to represent Portugal in the 12th Eurovision Song Contest, held on 8 April in Vienna, where “O vento mudou” finished in joint 12th place of the 17 entries. With Os Rocks, Nascimento released another EP, “Don’t Blame Me”, in 1968, before giving up his musical career and returning to Angola in 1969.
Nascimento is notable for being the first black male performer at Eurovision, the year after Milly Scott from the Netherlands became the first black female to sing at the Eurovision.
Nascimento died on 22 November 2019
