Draft:Fábia Maia

Fábia Maia (born April 25, 1993) is a Portuguese singer-songwriter. Born in Braga and raised in Barcelos, both cities in the north of Portugal, she started singing and playing guitar as a child. She took part in the RTP's Festival da Canção 2021 (the national preselection for the Eurovision Song Contest) with the song "Dia Lindo", written and performed by her, reaching the final stage of the competition. In the same year, she was part of the EQUAL Portugal playlist on Spotify, the platform's programme that gives more prominence to female artists in playlists.

With cover versions of Portuguese hip hop songs, which she released on her YouTube channel, Fábia was discovered in 2015 by the radio host Rui Miguel Abreu, who invited her to take part in the 1st Rimas e Batidas Festival in Lisbon. In 2017 she began her recording career with Melodia-me, followed by another EP in 2020, Santiago. Still in 2024, Fábia plans to release her first full-length album, Avariações, with a sound closer to pop, soul, R&B and other musical influences that are important to her.

Early life
Fábia Loureiro Lopes Maia was born on April 25, 1993, at the now-defunct São Marcos Hospital in Braga. Her Portuguese mother, Sílvia Lopes, is an accountant, and her Brazilian father, Ernilson Maia, is a football coach. She spent her youth in Barcelos, raised by her mother and grandmother Dilória. She started singing and playing guitar as a child, on the initiative of her grandmother, who gave her her first guitar and paid for her music lessons. She also liked to play football.

As a teenager, she discovered some of her musical idols to this day - Avril Lavigne, Lauryn Hill, Damien Rice - who made her less complex about her image and freer to express herself. As a result of a heartbreak, she started publishing hip hop covers on YouTube to try to win back her former lover, who liked this music genre. At the same time, she ventured into writing the lyrics and music for her first songs.

In 2012, Fábia decided to study Languages, Literatures and Cultures at the University of Porto for her love of writing and literature, instilled above all by her grandfather Fernando, who was a writer. However, the course didn't satisfy her and, the following year, she enrolled in Political Science and International Relations at the University of Beira Interior, a course she finished in 2016. This was followed by a postgraduate course in the same university and field of studies, International Relations, which she completed in 2018. She is currently studying for a master's degree in Family and Gender.

2015-2020: Beginnings and first EPs
As a result of the visibility brought by her cover videos, Fábia was invited by radio host Rui Miguel Abreu in 2015 to take part in the 1st Rimas e Batidas Festival at Cinema São Jorge, Lisbon. Alongside her studies, she released in 2017 her first EP, Melodia-me, featuring Slow J (on the track with the same name) and Jimmy P (on "Má Vida"). She then released some singles - "BarcelonaParis", "A Vibe Certa", "My Baby" and "Nem Sei" - published by Universal Music Portugal, which gave her a more prominent place on the Portuguese hip hop scene. In 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, she took the opportunity to take refuge and reflect on her journey so far. She decided to say "goodbye" to hip hop with a more introspective work, Santiago, where she talks about her unborn brother due to her mother's miscarriage. With this second EP, she returned to her musical origins (pop, jazz, soul and R&B) and to her teenage idols in order to rebuild her career and move on to a style of her own.

Later that year, she received an invitation to take part in the Festival da Canção 2021, the national preselection for the Eurovision Song Contest. In interviews, she confessed that this was the "best year" of her life so far and that her "intuitive heart" told her she would be called to the competition. "Two years earlier I had said to my friends: 'I'm going to be called to the Festival da Canção '. Everyone laughed, but the truth is that in 2020 I was a regional judge for the festival. Then, in November of that same year, I told them again that I was really going to the Festival [da Canção] and they couldn't believe it."

2021: Festival da Canção and international showcases
On January 20, 2021, the Portuguese public TV broadcaster responsible for the Festival da Canção, RTP, released the songs by the composers selected for that year's edition. "Dia Lindo", with lyrics, music and interpretation by Fábia Maia, attracted mixed reviews and, between praise and disapproval, ended up winning over the public and the contest jury - made up of singer Marta Carvalho, musician NBC, musician Paulo de Carvalho, photographer Rita Carmo, singer Rita Guerra and journalist Vanessa Augusto - in the first semi-final, guaranteeing her ticket to the final. At the last gala, held at the RTP studios on March 6 of the same year, the song finished in 10th place.

In September 2021, Fábia announced a crowdfunding request on GoFundMe to release her first full-length album independently. This petition was accompanied by a text explaining her journey through music and her motivation to keep going. "Today, in a way of sharing, I realised that all the no's I've received from managers, majors and other music associates are a compliment," she said, commenting that the title she chose for the album, Avariações, symbolises the way she feels: a foreigner "within her own country". As she also admitted, the album's title is a neologism that brings together the words "malfunction" (avaria), due to its disruptive positioning in relation to mainstream music, and "variations" (variações), symbolising difference through freedom and a tribute to António Variações, who she believes combines all these differences in himself).

Later that year, she was invited to do showcases for Femnøise and Sofar Sounds. The first, a Spanish non-profit organisation, invited Fábia to the 1st edition of Femnoise Fest, a gamified festival aimed at highlighting the emerging talent of dissident women in music. The second is a British live music community known for its private and intimate shows, published on streaming, which introduced the world to Fábia Maia's free sound in a family atmosphere.

Activism
Philanthropy

For Fábia, music has always been more than a source of income or fame. The artist uses her voice as a means of activism for social causes, especially LGBT rights and children's rights. In June 2021, Fábia revealed that she had fulfilled a "long-held wish" by donating a violin of hers to an institutionalised child in Braga. "I wanted to do this to create a connection between myself and a child, who I would like to accompany in the near future and eventually include in my musical moments," she confessed, stating that "if we can give [an instrument] to a child, we can save them through music and show that someone cares about them".