Sunday, January 11th, 2009
I had only three CDs of Brazilian music before I went to Brazil: Tim Maia, Jorge Ben, and Brazil Classics (#2) ‘O Samba’. There had been others, but I either lost the songs in digital never-never land or I misplaced the CDs (never to be found again.) It’s an embarrassing fact to admit because to go to a new country and not know much of the music is like missing out on every fourth word during conversation. And Brazil’s music – a huge chorus of voices and sounds resonating out from the interior, like a mysterious birds calling out truths that can only be sung – is not to be missed. I even venture to say that it’s some of the most romantic and engaging music around. This is, of course, purely subjective; as someone quite taken with the country itself, I’m equally enamored with the music. But I assume if you’re reading this, you have an interest (in the very least) in Brazil. So before you travel there, read some musical suggestions from a novice (but enthusiastic) Brazilian music fan. I’m happy to say I now have more than three CDs. In Brazil, I found myself showered with music, to be honest – Brazilians were eager to recommend “the best of the best” and burn me a few CDs. And fellow foreigners (much more musically astute than I) blessed me with more of their favorite Brazilian music. I’ve done some of my own research, as well, and even have attempted translation of several song lyrics – probably not the most accurate, but I get the gist. The following are just a few suggestions if you’re new to Brazilian music, and want to try a sampling of several genres, both contemporary and historical. For the seasoned fan, you can tell me what’s missing!
One of the primary instigators in the creation of the bossa nova style was Antônio Carlos Jobim (also known as Tom Jobim). He’s a Grammy Award-winning songwriter, composer, arranger, singer, and pianist/guitarist whose songs have been performed by many singers and instrumentalists, Brazil and international alike. João Gilberto (born in my favorite part of Brazil, Bahia) is also a Grammy Award-winner – a singer and guitarist often called the “Father of Bossa Nova” for his role in defining the music genre. His recordings in the 1950s (including many songs by Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes) established bossa nova as a steadfast element of Brazil’s musical landscape. Vinicius de Moraes (nicknamed O Poetinha – the little poet) from Rio de Janeiro was equally seminal in the contemporary Brazilian music scene. He wrote poetic lyrics for a great number of songs that were to become all-time classics. In addition to being a composer, he was also a playwright, and a diplomat. Gilberto Gil is a singer, guitarist and songwriter, and was until very recently, Brazil’s Minister of Culture. He is best known for his late 1960s Tropicalismo (also known as Troplicália, the art movement that arose in the 1960s in Brazil, and encompassed theater, poetry, music and art) recordings such as “Roda”, “Lunik 9”, and “Domingo No Parque”. Gil began his career as a bossa nova musician, but soon began (along with the likes of Caetano Veloso) writing songs centered on political awareness and social activism. Caetano Veloso is one of Brazil’s most popular and influential composers and singers. Born in Bahia, his younger sister (Maria Bethânia) preceded him into fame as a singer in the mid-1960s. His music spans many genres including bossa nova, Tropicália, Brazilian pop, and MPB (Música Popular Brasileira, or literally “Brazilian Popular Music”.) Celso Machado is a world music guitarist, percussionist and multi-instrumentalist. He lives in Vancouver, Canada but for over thirty years he has performed on concert stages throughout Brazil, Western Europe and Canada, as well as in the United States. He a teacher, composer and recording artist known for his ability to imitate bird calls using wind and percussion instruments. Juju Duarte is a gutsy singer from the back streets of Rio. Duarte sang for two decades in samba clubs, at religious gatherings, and street parties. His music is straightforward, folksy, and irresistible, infused with bossa nova and samba beats, played on an acoustic guitar. Check out his album Da Rua Dos Ossos (2007).
Moving on to the bands that were equally popular during the 1960s and 1970s (in the height of the Tropicália movement), we have Os Mutantes. They were an influential psychedelic rock band originally comprised of two brothers and a vocalist, but since then, have gone through numerous personnel changes. After a hiatus from the late 1970s (during the height of the Tropicália scene) to the early 2000s, the band reunited for a tour in 2006. Gal Costa (born Maria da Graça Costa Penna Burgos) from Salvador, is one of Brazil’s foremost female Tropicália movement singers and guitar players who played and sang during the late 1960s and 70s. Along with her friend Maria Bethânia, she became a political activist during the era of censorship under Brazil’s dictatorial government. Tom Zé (born Antônio José Santana Martins) has an eccentric style that bears him the title of being one of Brazil’s most iconic representatives of the ‘alternative sound’. Not only does he use objects as instruments, but also maintains an eclectic personal style. Influential during the Tropicália movement, Zé contributed (along with other artists such as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Os Mutantes, and Nara Leão) to the infamous Tropicália album / manifesto Tropicália: Ou Panis Et Circenses.
Milton Nascimento is a self-taught Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter, and guitarist considered an icon of MPB. Djavan (from Alagoas) combines traditional Brazilian rhythms with popular music drawn from all over the American continent, Europe and Africa; try Bicho Solto (1999). Tim Maia (who died in 1998) was an icon, known for his ironic, outspoken, and polemical (but always humorous) musical style. Maia performed in a variety of musical genres, ranging from happy and energetic dance music to sentimental songs, performing soul music, funk, and bossa nova in the 1990s. Marisa Monte was classically trained in opera singing, but grew up surrounded by the sounds of the Portela samba school. She combines diverse influences into her music. After the 1980s Brazilian Pop rock scene, she went to semi-exile in Italy where she became a hybrid of MPB diva and Pop rock performer. She has recorded traditional samba and folk tunes, as well and songs by Marvin Gaye and Lou Reed as well as many foreign artists. Lenine, a singer-songwriter from Recife, won two Latin Grammy awards in 2005 for “Best Brazilian Contemporary Album” and “Best Brazilian Song”. Jorge Ben from Rio is a popular musician whose characteristic style fuses samba, funk, and rock into samba-rock; his lyrics blend humor and satire with often esoteric subject matter.
Emerging in the 1980s and onwards, Legião Urbana is one of the most successful rock bands in Brazilian history. Originally created in 1983, the post-punk band continued to exist until 1996, with the death of its vocalist, Renato Russo. Cidade Negra’s songs about love and social issues have influences of reggae, soul and rock. CéU (whose full name is Maria do Céu Whitaker Poças) is a new, young face in the musical scene, but she’s quickly gaining notoriety. She is a singer-songwriter from São Paulo (born in 1980) whose first American album was released on the Six Degrees label in April 2007. She was born into a musical family as her father is a composer, arranger and musicologist. It was from her father that she learned to appreciate Brazil’s classical music composers, particularly Heitor Villa-Lobos, Ernesto Nazaré and Orlando Silva. Her music blends samba, bossa nova, reggae, pop and electronic. Ana Carolina (born in 1974 in Minas Gerais) is a singer, song-writer and multi-instrumentalist, who also came from a musical family. She grew up listening to MPB icons such as Chico Buarque, João Bosco and Maria Bethânia and international singers Nina Simone, Björk and Alanis Morissette. Seu Jorge (born Jorge Mário da Silva in 1970) was raised in a favela in the Baixada Fluminense region of Rio de Janeiro state. His fans consider him a “renewer” of Brazilian pop samba. Jorge cites samba school Estação Primeira de Mangueira, composers Nelson Cavaquinho, Zeca Pagodinho, and American soul singer Stevie Wonder as major musical influences.
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Monday, November 17th, 2008
Perhaps one of the more romantic places in Bahia (as in, go here for your honeymoon!) is the island of Itaparica. About thirty minutes by boat across the Bay of All Saint’s from Salvador, it is larger than what I imagined from reading about it in books. I thought it would be a tiny sliver of land, tucked in amongst other larger islands. Upon arrival, though, I saw the treed landscape spreading out to my left and right. The beachfront stretches out for what seems like miles, dotted by green banks and red-roofed houses. Mar Grande itself is a small town, but it breathes like a mini-city: restaurants and cafes line the street adjacent to the town square; an ever-changing row of taxis stands at attention, awaiting passengers; and music floats onto the street from either a café or someone’s car stereo. I stayed in Itaparica (the town shares the same name as the island) for two months, and was lucky to do so because I felt I had a real taste of island life. I had the good fortune of interviewing of one of the older residents of Itaparica – she was a veritable walking library! A retired professor, Dona Casimela maintains a healthy memory bank of knowledge about how life used to be on Itaparica. As she described, it was a self-sustaining nexus – a place from which many passenger boats (instead of the single fleet that runs today) used to zip to and from Salvador. It was home to many factories and thriving businesses; money stayed on the island, moving from people’s pockets to the businesses and back again, in a healthy economic cycle. Nothing stays the same, however, especially economies. Given the nature of urbanization, people and money started moving off of the island. The factories closed, the passenger boat fleet shrank its numbers; attention shifted to Salvador – now the source of most people’s jobs, food, and activities.
A monkey on the island of Itaparica
What remains on the island, however, is small town living. There is a peace, calm and deep beauty there. What you cannot find in Salvador is tranquility, or under-populated beaches. On Itaparica, you can stay in beautiful B & B’s and truly relax now that there is no longer the din of the city surrounding you. What you do hear are birds whistling, monkeys chattering, and the occasional peacock emitting its strange meow. You can hear children playing, capoeira music drafting out from studio open windows, and festivities livening up the town center. In downtown Itaparica, you can sit in the square, eat homemade ice cream (flavors made from Amazon fruits, even) overlooking the sea; you can leisurely dine at one of the restaurants lining the square. Afterwards, you can stroll along the beachfront paths, watching the lights blink on the water’s surface. If it’s beach time you’re seeking, there’s no better place than Itaparica. You’ll be lucky enough to watch the fishermen pulling in their day’s catch and capoeiristas practicing their fluid moves. Maybe the economy has slowed down here, but the romance has not!
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Thursday, November 13th, 2008
A street in downtown Salvador, Brazil.
One of my favorite things to do in Salvador, Brazil, is to walk down the street. I know, it doesn’t sound rip roaring or even mildly exciting, but you just have to trust me when I say it’s a worthwhile experience. Salvador is a city of about 4 million (large in my grand scheme of things since I’m from a tiny town in Vermont, U.S.A.); so it’s not as though there is a shortage of places to go: beachfront restaurants with tables legs nestled in the sand and green coconuts on the menu; neighborhood restaurants spilling out into the street; city squares and centers decorated with capoeira performers or slow wandering tourists; museums, galleries and clubs. For me, however, it’s enough to take the local buses and get off when I choose to wander the streets. There’s a street called Avenida Sete de Setembro that runs the length of waterfront Salvador. When you walk from Praça da Sé, abutting the historic centre of Pelourinho, you can walk for what seems several kilometers, I’m sure. I’m not one to count steps or mark distances (I’ve always been bad with directions) but I do know that you can spend hours just looking at and feeling the atmosphere. And there’s so much to touch! Leather, for one; at one junction where Avenida Sete de Setembro meets another street, there’s a huge leather market. The thousands of shoes are strapped onto the stall fronts, dangling in pairs of men’s, women’s and children’s. As far as I understand, they are made by hand in outlying areas of Bahia. There are also black fur hats, white leather bags, and garments that have been dipped, carved and pierced. I bought a pair of leather thongs – probably one of the more “low fi” pairs available, but lovely, nonetheless. I waited in the sun, barefoot, while the stall vendor adjusted then readjusted the shoe strap to fit perfectly. He would slide the shoe onto my foot; look up at me, and in my broken Portuguese, I’d tell him sim or não for how the shoe was fitting. He would nod, take the shoe, and disappear behind one of the stalls; I never saw which was his. But he’d reappear with the shoe, stretched or tightened, and we’d go through the routine again. The sandals fit perfectly now (as leather shoes do if given enough time on your feet.) When I wear them now, I remember the sound of the hard soles tap tap tapping along the cobbled streets of Salvador. The shoes make a different noise here, on more level pavement. After I bought those shoes that day, we carried on up the street, passing people wearing sandwich boards advertising political campaigns; shop owners leaning on the doorjambs of their shops; and men gathered in little groups around one of the cafezinho carts – little 4-wheeled contraptions pushed by the owner who sells little espresso shots of sweetened coffee from the row of tall, narrow bottles lining the cart. These carts are yet another of my favorite things to look for on the streets – red, yellow, green but all with black wheels, and each with a distinct style. There are indeed like roving cafés, providing momentary caffeine satisfaction and a pause in people’s journeys up and down the streets. I could suggest several restaurants, bars, museums, and galleries to visit in Salvador; but I would suggest your first activity is to find the nearest street curb along Avenida Sete de Setembro, and park yourself there long enough to watch the activity.
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Saturday, November 8th, 2008
Yemanjá, goddess of the sea, in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
If I told you to go to Brazil for your honeymoon, would you go? You should. If I told you to go to Brazil because you will never experience another country like it, would you go? You should. If I told you to go to Brazil because it might change your life, would you go? You should. It’s that simple! I could easily start any blog entry or travel update with this – let’s call it – hint. But never mind, even if you’re not getting married, and not necessarily seeking a lovely destination to celebrate your union to the one you love, nor are you really seeking a life-changing experience, Brazil will still call out to you. How? The most obvious, of course, is the mermaid who floats about in the seas off Salvador da Bahia, in the northeast of Brazil. Her name is Yemanjá, one of the orixás in Brazil’s candomblé religion. She is the queen of the ocean, patroness of the fishermen and survivors of shipwrecks, the feminine element of creation, and the spirit of moonlight. If you visit Salvador, you will see Yemanjá celebrated in statues and sculptures; in paintings and advertisements; and at the right times of the year (February and December, to name two), in festivals that take place in the sands next to the sea. My own experience with Yemanjá took place while riding the lancha (technically, the word means “launch” in Portuguese, but the small passenger boat has come to be known this way) from the island of Itaparica to Salvador city one late morning in September. I sat in the back of the boat, on a bench with my back to the sea; it is perhaps one of the best commutes in the world. Feeling the sun on my neck and the sea spray sprinkle my arm,
En route to the lancha, crossing the bay from Itaparica to Salvador da Bahia, Brazil
I didn’t mind the half hour journey. It surely beat driving or sitting in a taxi or riding a train. While I sat, I talked to my friend next to me, my head turned to the side so he could hear me. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash of light shimmer above the sea’s surface. I turned quickly to watch; a pod of three or four dolphins made a quick display, shooting out of the water and in less than a second, disappearing again. I pointed and made some sort of noise; a few other people turned and looked out over the sea; but there was only the churning water from the boat’s wake. I watched attentively, unfortunately ignoring my friend for the remainder of the ride. The dolphins never surfaced again. I began to wonder if, after all, maybe what I saw was something else. Maybe she was a silvery, ephemeral mermaid leaping out of the water, stretching in the sun, and observing her domain on the topside of the sea. I imagined that perhaps she wanted to meet me, greet me, and welcome me to Bahia; and to remind me, with that quick disappearance, that I should soak in the beauty around me because it could disappear in a flash. And it did disappear – I did leave Brazil; I no longer have that lancha commute and I no longer feel the sea spray on my arm as I journey across the bay. But the memory is solid, despite its watery nature! You must see and feel for yourself…go to Bahia and spend some time near the sea. And keep your eyes peeled for silvery flashes of light.
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Monday, November 3rd, 2008
I thought berimbau was some sort of Asian dish when I first heard the word. But in Brazil, and especially
where I was in Bahia (the northeast corner of Brazil, jutting out into the Atlantic), I learned immediately that it was not some sort of curry or a sweet and sour dish. It’s a strange, haunting, beautiful instrument found throughout Brazil but especially in Bahia, home of the equally infamous dance called capoeira. In fact, the berimbau and capoeira are mutually dependent – the one requiring the presence of the other. If there were only one instrument to symbolize Bahia, I would say it’s the berimbau. Any scenario I can imagine (everything from a samba dancing in a town square to a honeymoon cabana on the beach) I can hear a berimbau’s rubbery, liquid notes as an underscore to these soundtracks.
An artist friend of mine who lived with me for the two months I was in Brazil learned how to play the berimbau. He is a musician from Bangladesh; a classical flute player and composer by trade; a fanatic musical instrument collector by night! The evening he arrived back at the house with an elongated, soft case strapped to his back, nearly the same height as he is, I knew there was a new instrument in the house. His eyes glittered, and despite the fatigue of the journey to and from Salvador from Itaparica
(the island where we lived) to fetch the berimbau and then wrangle it on the buses, kombis (mini van taxis that scoot all over the island) and the final boat ride across the Bay of All Saints, he looked overjoyed. He pulled the berimbau from its case, and gave us the briefest of demonstrations. It seems to require four hands where most of us are only equipped with two: you need to stretch your pinky to hold the thin, bottom brace while at the same time maintaining the proper and fluctuating tension of the string; and then at the same time, the other hand is playing the notes with a little basket on stick filled with beans or shells. The notes resound through the hollowed gourd at the base of the instrument, which rests against the musician’s belly. I have no desire to learn to play it myself; but I’m happy to listen every chance I get. It’s the music of Brazil that is the most haunting; the most mysterious; the most indicative of the vibrant blend of cultures that make up northeast Brazil: Indigenous, African, Portuguese, and others who have crept in over the centuries. Whether you’re in Brazil to explore the Amazon or bask in a h
oneymoon glow or learn to speak Portuguese and dance the samba, listen for the berimbau! You’ll know it by the twang and the rhythmic heartbeat notes that can be the soundtrack to your Brazilian experiences.
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