Regional de NY

I'm making this evening's post a little plug for the Regional de New York.  I saw them at the Cornelia Street Cafe a month or two ago.  Their show was the most beautiful thing I've seen lately, and I spend a lot of my time looking for beautiful things.  These guys deserve way more attention than they get, and I believe they will be on the radar very soon.  If you don't know what choro music is, I can't think of a better introduction in New York City than these guys.  In a nutshell, it's the original Brazilian jazz, a mixture of African traditions and ragtime.  Scholars believe it is probably the oldest form of what we call jazz in the world, originating around the late 19th century in Rio.  Compositions follow very a strict form, and improvisation is highly structured.

Regional de New York is a Big Apple take on this old and challenging classical form.  They try a lot of very difficult things, and succeed almost all the time.  They are really tight, and they do it all, in true choro tradition, without a single sheet of written music.

I had a hard time choosing a video, but settled on "Santa Morena".

Regional de New York hosts a monthly roda de choro (jam session) at Beco Bar in Williamsburg.  The next one's on Sunday.  I'm going out of town, or I'd be there.  Check them out!

Daniela Mercury

This woman has become a living legend in the Brazilian music scene. She's a central figure in the style known as axé, pop music from the northeast state of Bahia that combines samba, reggae, and pop. She's one of those musicians who perhaps was criticized at first for appealing too much to the masses, but she's been on the scene so long that she's beyond reproach at this point.

I love her singing. Here she is in "Canto da Cidade", an ode to her beloved city of Salvador Bahia. Nothing else, in my opinion, captures the energy and magic of this city, central to Afro-Brazilian culture.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFMtw8KzMeM&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Carioca Funk

I can't explain my passion for funk music from Rio de Janeiro (carioca funk) in a single post.  For now let's just say the beat is infectious, the dancing is sensual and celebratory, and the birthplace is in the slums (favelas) of Rio, the same places where samba began.  These singers are mostly untrained and, as a group, come from a background of extreme poverty and violence.  Their language is Portuguese but uses a lot of slang. Audio production values are usually very basic and on-the-fly.  The result is gritty, home-made music with bizarre sampling, crude mixing, and lyrics with often graphic references to sex and violence that leave very little to the imagination, even if you don't understand Portuguese.

Some DJs have shocked middle-class Brazilians with their misogyny and their glorification of weapons and casual sex.  And funkeiros and their fans have taken a lot of abuse from the police, because of the association of many of their parties with the drug lords and gatos who tap electric and power lines.  But as the favelas become pacified and gradually safer, many funk DJs are dissociating themselves from the gangs, and their fans are increasingly clamoring to be left alone.  Even more recently, as the Brazilian economy has prospered, many DJs are carving out decent careers for themselves, as fans willingly pay for recordings and shows.  There is even a new documentary film about carioca funk.  With all the prosperity has come a host of agents, promoters, and record companies looking to share in the success of this music and spread it around the world.

And why not?  One of my favorite MCs is a woman who calls herself Pocahontas, whose music I still cannot find anywhere on Itunes or Amazon.  (Amazon Mobile has one track.)  Her fans have made videos with her music on YouTube, many of varying quality and a few too lewd to view on any shared computer.  There are a number of MP3s available for download on Soundcloud.  Pocahontas has a beautiful, tough-girl look and a raspy hangover voice and, with song-titles like "O Malandro Broxa" ("The Playboy Loses His Hard-on"), she's clearly not afraid of giving it right back to men who insult women.

Because the lyrics are in Portuguese -- but more because they're in favela Portuguese -- I miss a lot of the meaning, but I get the energy.  I found "Casa dos Machos", one of her hits, posted by a digital radio station on SoundCloud.  Funkeiros have a habit of hurling insults at one another in response to this or that track; this is a response to Mc Luan's "Casa das Primas".  The only thing I gathered from that song is that the guy is going where all the best girls and whiskey are.  This is how she responds.  If anyone can help with a translation, I'd be very grateful!

 03 - MC POCAHONTAS - CASA DOS MACHOS

Brasil Summerfest 2012!

Brazil plans to export some of their best musical talent to New York the week of July 21-28 and I, for one, plan to clear my schedule.  Now in its second year, Brasil Summerfest is a week of shows of Brazilian music at various venues around town.  The 2012 lineup promises to be a delightful combination of the familiar and the new, with established names such as Bebel Gilberto alongside relative unknowns such as hip hop singer Flavio Renegado.  The one I'm most excited about is a rising star named Luísa Maita, a young woman from São Pãolo who in 2010 was named by NPR as "a new voice of Brazil".  She started singing when she was a little kid, at first just doing radio jingles.  Now she's doing her own blend of bossa nova, MPB (Brazilian Popular Music), samba, and pop.  She's the kind of new musician whose shows you might have a hard time finding as a foreigner in Brazil, but she'll be right here in New York that week, working her musical magic.

I'll be doing more updates and calendar listings on Brasil Summerfest as more information is available.  For now, here's Luísa Maita singing her tune "Fulaninha", a song composed in the Northeastern Brazilian style known as baião. 

It's that Heat

Most Americans don't grow up hearing samba, but Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66 had some of their biggest U.S. hits in the 1960s and 1970s, when I was an impressionable Long Island kid.  So I think it's fair for me to say I grew up with his music.  Hearing "Mais Que Nada" or "The Fool on the Hill" on lazy summer mornings when I looked forward to having the whole day to play on the beach is one of my fondest childhood memories.

This video is something altogether different -- a track from Sergio's experiment with rap and hip hop.  In New York City we just went suddenly from an unseasonably cool Spring to searing heat.  Summer flipped on like a switch, making up for lost time, and today I found myself on the way to work rapping out the lyrics to "That Heat", a track with will-i-am and Erykah Badu, from his "Timeless" CD.  It's one track where the combination of hip-hop and samba works particularly well.  The tune features a tight tamborim section from a bateria playing a classic Carnival samba pattern, albeit more slowly than usual.  Here's to the beginnings of a beautiful, hot summer!

Paulinho da Viola

I don't remember exactly where I first heard the music of Paulinho da Viola, but I probably heard his name before his music.  He's one of the latest in a long line of samba singers and composers associated with the Velha Guarda da Portela (the Old Guard of Portela), and rightly called the greatest living sambista.  He's got a particularly unique and beautiful way of slightly lowering his voice at the end of a phrase during quiet, reflective songs, but he's equally expressive in joyful, loud moments.  Several of his compositions have been featured in Carnaval parades -- the highest honor accorded any sambista.  His lyrics are beautiful, articulate, and thoughtful, and are easily appreciated once you cross the language barrier.  In "Meu Tempo É Hoje" (My Time is Now), for instance, he raises the subject of conformity and hypocrisy.  (This is my own approximate translation, by the way -- apologies to native Portuguese speakers for any nuances lost.)


I pity those who lower themselves to the floor,
selling themselves out for money or position.
I had no part in that fearsome struggle,
because I know that, other than flowers,
nothing goes on your coffin.


These YouTube videos show the range of what this man is capable of doing with his voice:

Here he is with Gilberto Gil playing "Danca da Solidao":

Solitude is the wash
that covers everything
bitterness in my mouth
smile with false teeth
the word embedded in my heart
resigned to the world
in the rhythm of disillusion.
I dance, you dance,
the dance of loneliness...

Paulinho da Viola will be coming to Carnegie Hall on November 28.  More info to be found in the Event Calendar.

Why Brazilian Music?

Sometime in the 1990s, I suddenly got bored or tired of all the music I'd been listening to.  Much of it seemed clever at best, commercialized and overproduced at worst.  Then, in 2005, I discovered samba.  This music, with its African roots, its exotic syncopation, its energy and exuberance, reminded me of all the things I found missing in music.  It reminded me of places I'd never visited, gave me memories I'd never had.   Listening, I could feel my soul gaining strength the way a tree gains strength through sunlight and water:  feeling it coming up through the earth and through my feet, thrilling my whole body.  No music since the blues had done this for me.

I soon discovered that most Brazilian music has this quality.  Whether it's traditional samba or sophisticated bossa nova, crowd-pleasing pagode, country-style forró from the Northeast, or electronic carioca funk with its defiant and often obscene irreverence, all Brazilian music is special.  It's musically interesting and is a simple expression of the sheer joy of being alive.  Not only that, but it has a way of speaking universally to all people while at the same time being distinctively, beautifully Brazilian.

This blog is a celebration of the various genres of music from this diverse and magical land.  After seven years of deep exploration, I'm still discovering styles I've never heard of, each with its own universe of creators, artists, and innovators.  I'm looking forward to sharing my discoveries on here and finding new ones from my friends and fellow Brazilian music lovers around the world.  I'm also hoping to post reviews of new CD releases, and to post news of upcoming shows in the New York City area.  The Brazilian music community in New York City is a relatively small group of amazing musicians whose talent is generally unrecognized except for a few big names.  I hope to change that.