Eliane Elias: "I Thought About You: A Tribute to Chet Baker"

Eliane Elias has been known until recently as a Brazilian singer who has done a few marvelous interpretations of American standards, such as "Baubles, Bangles, and Beads", and "Take Five".  But I suspect that's about to change.  Her new album, I Thought About You:  A Tribute to Chet Baker, was released today, on the first of a five-night run at Birdland Jazz Club in New York City.  It's dedicated wholly to American music, specifically to the music of the late icon of the Cool Jazz movement.

Eliane has long been considered one of the most versatile and expressive jazz vocalists on the scene right now.  Born in São Paolo, she's equally at home with samba and swing, with ballads and bossa nova, and with so many of the other Brazilian grooves, such as baião and afoxé, that are gradually becoming part of the repertoire of the music of the world.  Eliane is also an accomplished classical and jazz pianist with a distinctive style of jazz improvisation:  her piano riffs are immediately recognizable as hers and hers alone.  She came onto the scene at age 17, performing onstage with Brazilian heavy-hitters Vinicius de Moraes and Toquinho.  Since  then, her career has been on a quiet, upward trajectory that has gained her fans on every continent.  I came to her music late, in 2008, after hearing her second appearance on Marian McPartland's public radio show Piano Jazz, and  immediately fell in love with the way her vocal lines, like those of the truly great bossa singers, drift in and out of the beat, swaying with the rhythm but not rigidly tied to it.  Her 2011 album "Light My Fire" was a masterpiece.  She switches effortlessly between English and Portuguese on a couple of tracks.  Her piano playing is flawless, and her singing has a way of giving a listener the impression of singing for you, and for you alone.  She also has some of the best musicians working today on that album, such as Oscar Castro-Neves,  Romero Lumbambo, and Marivaldo Santos, to name but a few.

Eliane Elias' love of Chet Baker and his music is understandable:  both artists share a certain romantic and lyrical sensibility.  But she manages to bring a fresh voice to many of these standards, preserving their romanticism without lapsing into sentimentality.  She does this, as this review in AllAboutJazz.com says, by singing the music "straight and uncomplicated".  Add the genius of her piano, her distinctively, outrageously sexy Brazilian accent, the easy transition between samba and swing -- in one case, on the same track -- and you've got music that will drive a listener slowly, delightfully crazy.

Eliane is assisted this time by Steve Cardenas (electric guitar), husband Marc Johnson (bass), Randy Brecker (trumpet), Oscar Castro-Neves (acoustic guitar), Victor Lewis and Rafael Barata (drums), and Marivaldo dos Santos (percussion).  It is a wonderful interpretation of this portion of the American songbook.

Eliane Elias will be at Birdland Jazz Club nightly through June 1, playing sets at 8:30 and 11:00  

And here she is discussing the new album:  

O que Voçê Quer Saber de Verdade ("What You Really Want to Know")

A correct answer to a trivia question on Brazil Club USA's Facebook page led to a free copy of the new CD by international star Marisa Monte this week.  I eventually would have gotten around to giving this album a listen -- it's her first in six years -- but a hearty obrigado to Brazil Club for making it happen sooner.  This is a lush development of a sound she began cultivating with collaborators Arnaldo Antunes and Carlinhos Brown on their 2002 Tribalistas CD, though it's evolved quite a bit in the interim, and includes material that's much more diverse musically.  There's the exuberance of the title track, echoes of Lennon-McCartney in "Depois", covers of tunes by MPB artists such as Andre Carvalho and Jorge Ben Jor, and a large number of originals created with Antunes and Brown that evoke that dreamy, texturally rich sound and the quiet -- almost restrained -- joy that I associate with Marisa Monte.

Released at the same time as "What You Really Want to Know" was a video for "Ainda Bem", an original tune from the album written with Antunes.  In a cool stroke of genius, Marisa Monte chose Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu champion Anderson Silva as her dance partner for the video.  So when we see it, we're watching a warrior display sensitivity, tenderness, and direction.  I have not seen a more beautiful rendition of the interplay between masculine and feminine in a very long time.



A few years ago, in an interview, Marisa Monte, in response to complaints that she disliked answering questions about her personal life, said something like, "There's not much to know -- I'm just a regular person."  Perhaps the album title's lyrics are a kind of sideways answer to curious fans -- an exhortation to pay attention to our own lives, and find freedom there -- or perhaps not.  Either way, I found the Portuguese beautiful.  My on-the-fly translation, even if it loses something, might come close:

Go with no direction

Go to be free

Sadness can't resist

Let your hair loose to the wind

Don't look back

Listen to the little noise that time makes

in your chest

Make your pain dance.

Be sure to listen

to this movement that brings peace

every leaf that falls

every cloud that passes

Hear the earth breathe

through the windows and doors of the houses

Be sure to listen

What you really want to know.

Criolo

Kleber Cavalcante Gomes, known to the world as Criolo, will be performing tomorrow in Central Park as part of Brasil Summerfest.  He's part of a stellar lineup of musicians that I can't stop writing about.  According to the wikipedia entry about him, he's from a São Paolo favela, the child of parents who originally arrived from a Northeast Brazilian state.  They say São Paolo is the Brazilian city most like New York, and of all the Brazilian rappers I've heard, Criolo would probably be the most urban and familiar to a New York audience.  That might be because he's been at this a long time:  he's been doing rap since 1989, and as Woody Allen once said, 80% of success is just showing up -- doing shows, recording, and generally putting yourself out there.  But Criolo was relatively unknown until around the year 2000, when his Brazilian show "Rinha dos MCs" (a kind of "battle of the bands" for Brazilian rap singers) became a big hit.  Hopefully this New York appearance will put him on the map internationally.

Now at age 36, although he fuses different styles, he's long since found his voice and his own sound that runs through everything he does.  His songs are all a bit different but have his own unique stamp, as is the case with many mature artists.  Bogotá is frenetic and funky, conjuring images of inner-city life, while Freguês da Meia Noite has echoes of Portuguese fado and Brazilian brega. 

Like most Brazilian musicians, Criolo has a strong sense of the place he's from which grounds his music and makes him trustable as a voice, even if you don't completely get the Portuguese.  His song Não Existe Amor Em SP ("There is no love in São Paolo"), compares his city to a bouquet of dead flowers, mixing anger, sadness, and a deep love for what he wants for his hometown:

Tribute to Luiz Gonzaga

Lincoln Center's Midsummer Night Swing closes this weekend, and the second-to-last show featured a lineup of forró musicians.  Forró is both country music from Northeast Brazil, and the particular form of partner dance that goes along with it.  It's been popular in that part of the country, in one form or another, since the Portuguese settled there, but it remained relatively obscure outside the Northeast states until Luiz Gonzaga came along.  Gonzaga brought the music, first to Rio de Janeiro, and later the rest of the country via popular MPB artists who covered many of his tunes.  Last night was a tribute to this man and his music, at a time when forró is being spread in a much bigger way, throughout North America and the world.  Quarteto Olinda and Maciel Melo, Biliu de Campina, and Walmir Silva played four short sets and, if you didn't know what forró is by the start of the dance lesson, you definitely knew by the end of the night. 

Quarteto Olinda at Midsummer Night Swing

A popular story is that forró got its name from the English phrase "for all".  In the early part of the last century, when the British were building roads throughout Northeast Brazil, the workers held weekend parties to which people of all races and classes were invited.  This was considered highly unusual at the time, and the phrase "it's for all" got repeated by Africans, native people, and Portuguese speakers, until "for all" somehow became forró.  The story, whether it's true or not, shows the true democratic spirit of this dance, and last night was a perfect example.  It was old and young, single, married, Brazilian and American, black, white, Asian, short, tall, those who can dance and those (like me) who cannot.  Two bands played two sets each, and I must say that, even though this music never enthralled me the way other forms of Brazilian music have, it was beautiful to experience the musicians' dedication to this style, and to see so many New Yorkers get their first taste of Northeast Brazil.  I also saw a very cool sight, a scene which I'm told is becoming a bit more frequent at Midsummer Night Swing:  a woman in a wheelchair being twirled around by a young man.  I snapped a picture, but they were gone before I could ask for permission to publish it.

In addition to Quarteto Olinda, one member of last night's lineup about whom I'm very curious is Maciel Melo.  His website is in Portuguese and so it's going to take me awhile to absorb all the info, but he is another fabulous player from the Northeast who may be about to hit the international circuit in a big way.  One of his videos really pulls on my heartstrings and fires my imagination:

You'll be reading more in the near future about this music in general, and these musicians in particular, as well as Walmir Silva and Biliu de Campina.  Stay tuned.

Flávio Renegado

Rap and hip-hop, funk, samba, reggae, and sometimes even Cuban music come together in the music of Flávio Renegado.  I hadn't heard of him prior to the announcement of the Brasil Summerfest lineup, but he is an amazing, multi-faceted musician and community organizer whose career is accelerating rapidly.  According to his press release, he got his start putting together a rap group that later morphed into a non-governmental organization (NGO) of which he is still director.  I hope someday to hear the whole story of this organization's evolution.  Meanwhile, Flávio is making an original blend of exotic, urban, soul-stirring music that defies categorization, and that New Yorkers will totally appreciate.  Sometimes it's rap, sometimes soul or funk, sometimes there are hints of samba or even choro, but his style is always unmistakably his own.  He raps a lot and uses funky beats, but his music is not to be confused with carioca funk.  Production values are high, he sings as much as he raps, and anyway he's from Belo Horizonte.  It's OK if you don't understand the rapping in Portuguese -- think of his voice as another instrument, stirring your feelings just like a trumpet or a clarinet.

His Facebook page has links to news, free downloads, and SoundCloud files, but doesn't come up in a cold search -- visit it here or via his main site.  You can also stream his new album, "My Tribe is the World" on the main site.

Flávio Renegado will be coming to Central Park on July 21.  Here he is peforming the title track from "Do Oiapoque a Nova York" (from Oiapoque to New York).  This was his first album released under the name "Renegado". 

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