Chico Buarque February 26, 2008
Posted by Tom Moore in : Uncategorized, brazil, brazilian, popular , trackback
The songwriter/singer/novelist Chico Buarque has a career spanning decades and including collaborations with the top figures in Brazilian music, including Tom Jobim, but although he is part of the pantheon south of the Equator, he is very little known in the United States, for a variety of reasons. Most importantly, the balance between verbal play and musical ingenuity in his songs tilts toward the former, not because the musical content is weak, but because the lyrics are incomparable. This means that listeners who might be able to appreciate the work of Caetano Veloso, a flamboyant performer and a composer whose music draws more on international styles, even without understanding what he is singing about, may find it hard to discover a way into the large and diverse oeuvre of Chico Buarque, whose songs require a deep knowledge of the Portuguese language. In addition, Buarque performs rarely, whether inside Brazil or out. (It is noteworthy that there is one article on Buarque in the NY Times, by the foreign correspondent in Rio, as compared with dozens on Veloso).
The Music Library has just acquired a 21-CD collection of Buarque’s recordings, as well as nine DVDs. There could be almost no better reason for brushing up your Portuguese.
DVD 691, DVD 901, DVD 902 and CD 16101-16122
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