cover versions

Had a post-work CD shopping binge this evening at the excellent Flashback Records in Essex Road. You know how it is on a Friday.

Pretty pleased with my haul, which included the following two fine examples of Brazilian cover art:

They'd look even better on those big record sleeves we used to get...

bad cover version

This week on "Later with Jools Holland", we learn that Diana Krall, for many years entranced by Brazilian rhythms, has felt sufficiently moved to cram her new album choc full of bossa nova tributes. To illustrate this, she slides into a husky gender-reassigned version of "Girl from Ipanema".

Now I like a bit of jazz as much as the next man but I just can't get on with this. Slurry and out-of-tune, for me it's bordering on Vic Reeves territory. It's a classic tune Diana. Why condemn it to such a painful and unnecessary death?

.

On the up-side, this week's programme also includes the very excellent Unthanks and some great soul from Maxwell.

slaves to the rhythm

50 Years of Bossa Nova @ the Barbican, 26th May
with Vinicius Cantuária, Dori Caymmi, João Donato, Celso Fonseca, Joyce, Carlos Lyra, Roberto Menescal, Clara Moreno, Wanda Sa and Marcos Valle

It's probably a bit churlish to complain that this gig was a bit samey and I can't really say it didn't do what it said on the tin. Certainly there was no shortage of soothing baritone voices over lilting guitar figures--and the majority of the singers, male and female alike, accompanied themselves on the guitar (it's as if forty or fifty years ago Brazilian children learned these guitar parts as they started to walk and talk). More of a keyboard-based sound was provided by the contributions of Joyce, João Donato and particularly the funkier sound of Marcos Valle's electric piano but I actually found the more "traditional" approach of Vinicius Cantuária's performance the most affecting. Singing in little more than a whisper and quietly accompanied only on his own gently plucked acoustic guitar, he managed--impressively--to bring the enthusiastic (mainly Brazilian) sell-out Barbican crowd to an appreciative hush.

A couple of press reviews:
- The Independent
- The Times

Other stuff:
- Video material from BBC's recent "Brasil Brasil" series
- Wikipedia tells it like it is

- If you type "bossa nova" into youtube, you get some real rubbish: here are some good bits though by the important bossa nova people:

Águas de Março by Tom Jobim & Elis Regina:



Chega de saudade by Joao (and presumably Astrud) Gilberto:



Desafinado by Joao Gilberto:

live stuff: tropicalia remixed at the barbican, 19/5/06

To open the evening Orquestra Imperial (featuring Moreno Veloso, son of Caetano) do an excellent hour-and-a-half-long set with about twenty musicians on stage. More than once they complain that they are not used to people in the audience sitting and listening rather than dancing along. Ironically, in a set of mostly perfectly danceable Brazilian songs, it's an instrumental version of a song by stodgy prog rockers Yes--"Owner of a lonely heart"--which finally gets them to their feet!

The main act is a reworking of "Tropicalia ou Panis et Circensis", the landmark 1968 album which began the Tropicalia movement. Under the direction of Chief High Llama and Spanish guitar maestro Sean O'Hagan, the band is otherwise made up mainly of Brazilian musicians (from Orquestra Imperial, Nacao Zumbi and Moreno +2). Super Furry Animal Gruff Rhys hums along on a couple of numbers and the Bees also join in on some tracks.

The performance of classic albums is very much in vogue at present. I was particularly put in mind of the Brian Wilson's Smile concerts a couple of years ago. The music is similar in many ways, quite melodic with some unusual harmonies, and at times a bit surreal--the odd bicycle bell and an occasional siren. No fireman's helmets this time though...

Other sites:
- More about Brazilian events in the U.K. at www.brazilianartists.net
- A Guardian article on Tropicalia

the sound of the suburbs

"Moro no Brasil: the sound of Brazil" (2002), screened as part of the Barbican's "Tropicalia" film season, is a travelogue of Brazilian music narrated and directed by Finnish film director Mika Kaurismaki. Beginning in the musically diverse regions of the north-east of the country (Bahia and Pernambuco), it features many performances by local groups ranging from indigenous ritual ceremonies to teenage street rappers. Moving down to Rio, the film covers some of the same ground as "Favela Rising" depicting the shanty town dwellers who rise above poverty and drug dealing by playing in local music groups. There are echoes of Wim Wenders' "Buena Vista Social Club" when Kausimaki interviews Walter Alfaiate, an elderly singing tailor. He also talks to singer Margaret Menezes and Seu Jorge (link) too features at some length and there is a fantastic scene near the end in which favelistas dance on the rooftops to some James Brown funk.
More info about the film.

live stuff: tom ze at the barbican, 1/5/06

...my first visit to the Barbican's current "Tropicalia" season, celebrating the Brazilian artists who made their name in the rebel songwriters' movement of the sixties. Tom Ze is billed as the "most radical of all the Tropicalistas still alive". To prove the point, he opens with his new operetta on the subjugation of women, hitting an early note of visual slapstick which continues throughout when he and a fellow singer don hard hats and hit each other rhythmically on the heads with mallets. Ze runs around the stage like a twelve-year-old: amazingly he is seventy. To his credit, for the benefit of the non- Portuguese speakers amongst us, he does attempt the occasional explanation in his schoolboy English for his on-stage antics and apparently hilarious lyrics (annoyingly, the Brazilian couple sitting next to me are in stitches all night). Despite the long-winded explanations I have read about the influences on his music--which, according to Wikipedia, "appropriates samba, bossa nova, Brazilian folk music, forró ... American rock and roll ... dissonance, polytonality, and unusual time signatures"--I find his music pretty accessible and not too difficult to get my head round on even on first hearing. I do know that for a pensioner, he moves pretty fast...
Slipcue.com has more on
- Tom Ze
- Tropicalia
- Brazilian music