Chico Buarque February 26, 2008
Posted by Tom Moore in : Uncategorized, brazil, brazilian, popular , add a comment
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
Brazilian beats August 13, 2007
Posted by Tom Moore in : Lenine, Pernambuco, Recife, Siba, brazil, brazilian, folk, pop, popular, rabeca , add a comment
MESTRE AMBROSIO – CD 7527
Music-lovers from outside Brazil usually identify the country musically with the samba, the highlight of Carnaval each year, a cultural product imported to Rio de Janeiro from Salvador in the early twentieth century, and adopted as a national symbol by the government of Getulio Vargas in the 30’s and 40s. But Brazil, a large country with a heritage of more than 500 years since its colonization, has musical roots that are deep and various, and nowhere more so than in the Northeast, where the Portuguese arrived first. If a composer wants to evoke Brazil, he draws upon the folk music of the Northeast -particularly Paraiba and Pernambuco.
The musical group known as Mestre Ambrosio (“Mestre”, or master, is the honorific given to a skilled musician) is based in Recife, the capital of Pernambuco. The group was formed in 1992, and recorded its first CD in 1995, which was produced by pop star Lenine. Unlike Lenine’s music, where more mainstream musical sounds are flavored with Northeastern idioms, Mestre Ambrosio is much closer to back-country Northeastern roots, with a stripped-sound style based on the rabeca (a folk-violin which dates to Portuguese borrowings from Muslim invaders in the middle ages), with percussion. Lots of percussion – the photo on the CD shows the lone rabeca (played by Siba) with no fewer than five percussion instruments. On occasion you may hear an electric guitar or bass – but the music rocks without these. The groove is infectious, and the lyrics amusing or hilarious, with a deadpan delivery by lead singer Siba. Once this disc hits your CD player, it will stay there.
Official site (Portuguese only): http://www2.uol.com.br/mestreambrosio/
-Tom Moore
