The Beat Goes On
From the Samba to the Bossa Nova, Brazilians InfuseTheir Music with
Driving Drums and Mesmerizing Rhythms
by Larry Rohter
Brazil. The mere mention of
the South American giant brings to mind a host of romantic images:
palm trees, beaches, bronzed bodies, soccer performed as ballet,
Carnival, flying down to Rio. And, of course, music. There is probably
no country anywhere else in the world that relies so thoroughly on the
marriage of word and melody to define its essential character and
express its deepest yearnings.
Brazilian music takes many forms, from the heavy, powerfully
percussive samba of the favelas, or squatter slums, of Rio de Janeiro,
where thousands of drummers march each year in the orgy of sound and
revelry called Carnival, to mainstream pop songs so light and lushly
lyrical that they seem to float above the beat. But Brazilian music
does have a unifying principle, that of ginga, a concept whose closest
English-language equivalent is swing. It is that basic feature that
has so beguiled foreigners from the days of Carmen Miranda more than
half a century ago right up to the present day, influencing such pop
stars as Paul Simon, Sting, Peter Gabriel, Stevie Wonder and David
Byrne.
But it is also there for the taking for the rest of
us, and one does not have to spring for a trip to Rio to do so. The
worldwide interest in Brazilian music has become such in recent years
that the works of most of the country's major singers and musicians
are now available on disc in the United States. For anyone who has
learned to savor the tropical experience, this music is the next best
thing to being there.
Start, as so many people do, with the bossa nova, the
gently pulsing mix of acoustic guitars, subtle rhythms and understated
vocalizing that has been familiar the world over for more than 30
years. That means songs like "The Girl From Ipanema" and "Quiet Nights
of Quiet Stars" and above all, Antônio Carlos "Tom" Jobim, the
pianist, guitarist, singer and composer who wrote both of those songs
and dozens more that have been recorded hundreds of times over.
During a career that spanned 40 years, Jobim, who
died in 1994, captured the admiration not just of his countrymen but
of English-speaking artists ranging from Frank Sinatra, with whom he
made an album of duets in 1966, to Sting, who sang "How Insensitive"
on Jobim's final record in 1995, the posthumously released
Antônio Brasileiro. Jobim was a prolific songwriter who was
comfortable working in a variety of formats (with singers or in
purely instrumental settings, with large orchestras or small
ensembles, recorded live or in the studio) and never stopped
tinkering with his music, so it is not unusual to find a half-dozen
recorded versions of his key compositions.
But certain discs and performances stand out even
amid so vast and distinguished a body of work. Elis and Tom, recorded
in Los Angeles in 1974, paired Jobim with Elis Regina, the singer with
the silky, seductive voice whom many Brazilians consider the finest
interpreter of his music, and includes "Waters of March," a song Jobim
regarded as perhaps his crowning achievement. A Arte de Tom Jobim
provides a thorough overview of Jobim's music, offering versions of 22
of his best-known songs, many of them in instrumental form, while
Antônio Carlos Jobim: Jazz Masters focuses on the composer's
clear affinities with American jazz. (The compliment has been repaid
in recent recordings such as saxophonist Joe Henderson's Double
Rainbow and pianist Eliane Elias' Eliane Elias Plays Jobim.)
Among the many artists associated with the bossa
nova, Jobim's only peer was his close friend and longtime musical
associate, the eccentric singer and guitarist João Gilberto,
whose groundbreaking early efforts have been brought together on The
Legendary João Gilberto: The Original Bossa Nova Recordings. It
was Gilberto, rather than Jobim, who, accompanied by his then-wife,
Astrud, and the American jazz saxophonist Stan Getz, recorded the
version of "The Girl from Ipanema" that became a worldwide hit in
1964, challenging the popularity of even The Beatles. Since then, the
percussive guitar strumming, unexpected harmonic twists and
understated vocals that are the hallmark of the Gilberto style have
been absorbed by musicians all over the world, turning up even in such
unlikely places as the work of British pop stars such as Sade and
George Michael, whose new record is dedicated to Jobim.
More recently, though, Gilberto has preferred to work
as a solo act, just a voice and an acoustic guitar, and has resisted
all efforts to get him into a recording studio for any length of
time. That has resulted in a simple, uncluttered sound that allows him
to emphasize the gentle rhythm that has always been the essence of the
bossa nova sound. A pair of recent live recordings, João
Gilberto: Live in Montreux and João Gilberto Ao Vivo: Eu Sei
que Vou Te Amar, range widely over the Jobim songbook and convincingly
paint the picture that Gilberto now wishes his music to convey: less
is more.
With Elis Regina, on the other hand, more was never
enough. Almost as notorious for her tempestuous love affairs and
legendary outbursts of temper as for her unerring vocal gifts, she
died of a drug overdose in 1981, leaving behind a body of work that
has influenced every Brazilian singer since. Fascination: The Best of
Elis Regina offers the best overview of her 15-year career and
demonstrates how dramatic and emotional a singer she was. Elis Regina:
Elis por Ela has a much narrower focus: 10 of its 14 songs come from
her two favorite composers, Antônio Carlos Jobim and Milton
Nascimento, and her performances are luminous in their beauty.
Like Elis Regina, Jorge Ben came to prominence during
the bossa nova period, with a gentle samba called "Mas Que Nada"; the
song has been recorded by more than 200 artists around the world and
made into a hit in the United States by Sergio Mendes. But Ben has
always had a much stronger following in the working-class
neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro than the more sophisticated bossa nova
crowd, and many of his best early songs, contained on Samba Nova and
Pais Tropical, focus on the concerns of that world, such as soccer
events and other festivals. Amazingly, after modifying his name to
Jorge Benjor, the 54-year-old singer and guitarist has in recent years
been able to reinvent himself as a rollicking purveyor of
rock-influenced party music, as demonstrated on a raucous concert
recording called Live in Rio.
Bossa nova was also one of the starting points for
tropicalismo, the most important Brazilian musical movement of the
last quarter century. But the four prime exponents of that school, all
of them born in the northeastern state of Bahia and acquainted with
each other since childhood, were equally influenced by the folk music
of their native region and the invasion of British and American rock
groups that occurred just as they were becoming professional
musicians. As a result, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Maria
Bethânia and Gal Costa have become the most significant artists
of their generation, carving out careers in which they function as
ambassadors of Brazilian music to the rest of the world while
simultaneously absorbing and transforming foreign styles for
consumption at home.
Perhaps the most eclectic of all Brazilian artists,
open to influences from every corner of the globe, Gil in particular
has found ways to work rock and roll, reggae, funk and salsa into his
music without sacrificing its distinctly Brazilian character. His most
recent American release, for instance, a live unplugged set called
Gilberto Gil Acoustic, charmingly inserts the melody of The Beatles'
"Daytripper" into "Realce," one of the best known of his own
songs. But he has also managed to seamlessly synthesize indigenous
Brazilian styles, from samba and bossa nova to folk styles such as
baião and frevo, while still leaving his unmistakable personal
stamp on everything he does.
In fact, Gil's music always contains two constants,
no matter what trend he may be adapting for his own purposes:
beautifully uplifting melodies and the warm, gentle caress of his
voice. Of his recent recordings, Parabolicamará, a meditation
on technology and change that still manages to be both engaging and
highly danceable, probably showcases those strengths to best
effect. But it is also rewarding to turn to earlier, somewhat harder
to obtain discs such as Extra or Refazenda, where his fascination with
the various musical permutations of the African diaspora is most
prominent.
Gil's close friend, songwriting partner and virtual
alter ego, Caetano Veloso, is a cooler, less emotive artist, yin to
Gil's yang, but no less important a songwriter and performing
talent. Together, they launched the tropicalismo movement in the late
1960s, and in 1993 they collaborated again on Tropicalia 2, a rich
musical stew in which they employ everything from rudimentary
percussion instruments to the latest digital sampling
techniques. Veloso's recent solo recordings, such as Circulado and
Estrangeiro, are equally sophisticated in terms of instrumentation and
their clever, dense and often surrealistic lyrics. That, combined with
the ringing endorsement of American pop stars like David Byrne, has
helped him find an audience among both the Manhattan downtown set and
the Brazilian intelligentsia, many of whom regard Veloso as one of
their country's greatest living poets.
But Veloso is probably most affecting in a simpler
context, with just a couple of acoustic guitars, a keyboard or flute,
and a gently pulsing rhythm section to frame his voice, best described
as vulnerable yet consoling. The Art of Caetano Veloso and
Personalidade are compilations of some of his most admired Brazilian
hits; they highlight his gift for combining melody and wordplay on
tracks such as "Menino do Rio" and "Beleza Pura," while Cores Nomes
(Colors Names) and Caetano are delicious tropical confections that
underline Veloso's debt to the bossa nova movement, his idol
João Gilberto in particular.
It is always entertaining to observe the expression of shock and
confusion that passes across the faces of people hearing the music of
Veloso's sister, Maria Bethânia, for the first time. She
possesses a dark, smoky, almost masculine voice that often seems at
odds with her waiflike appearance, and that contrast injects her music
with a deep sense of drama and melancholy. Many Brazilians regard her
as the most accomplished interpreter of her brother's songs, but she
brings deep feeling to the work of other composers, too, rolling her
"rrrrs" and allowing her voice to break in order to emphasize some
profound truth she has discovered in the lyrics of a song that has
moved her.
In purely stylistic terms, the other towering female
talent to come out of Bahia, Gal Costa, could hardly be more
different. Her voice is silvery and lustrous, a sultry invitation to
drift off into a sensuous daydream. But as she demonstrates on the
greatest hits collection entitled Personalidade, she shares the same
sure, unfailing sense of rhythm that musicians from Bahia seem to
imbibe from childhood along with the cachaça, or burning
sugarcane liquor, that is native to their region. So a typical Gal
Costa disc, such as Gal Tropical or Aquarela do Brasil, inevitably has
a joyous and festive air to it, mixing tunes by leading Brazilian
songwriters with the occasional Cole Porter or Lennon and McCartney
composition. No matter that even those songs are sung in Portuguese
translations: Costa's voice is so utterly captivating that, in the
end, words do not seem to matter.
Fittingly, the most popular new performer to come out of Bahia
in the 1990s is Daniela Mercury, a young singer whose music,
appearance and onstage manner is imbued with a strong Gal Costa
influence. On her two biggest discs, O Canto da Cidade and Musica de
Rua, Mercury has deftly mined the rhythmic innovations of the blocos,
or neighborhood bands, that have made the annual Carnival celebrations
in Salvador, the capital of Bahia, a beacon for musicians and party
lovers the world over. The best known of those drum choirs, Olodum,
provided the driving beat behind Paul Simon's hit song "The Obvious
Child" and, on the basis of that success, was invited to record
Olodum: Live at the Montereux Jazz Festival, which highlights the
African roots of Bahian music.
It may be going too far to say that the dreadlocked
crooner Djavan is the male equivalent of Daniela Mercury, but there is
no way to deny the strong and obvious kinship between his music and
that of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. In fact, one of Djavan's hits
from the early 1980s, "Sina," is an homage to Veloso, sung in the
style of Gil. Since then Djavan has grown into a first-class writer of
love songs, such as those contained on Seduzir and Petala, with a
romantic voice that recalls some of the great American soul singers in
their prime (which perhaps explains Stevie Wonder's fondness for
Djavan's music). His latest disc, Novena, finds a sophisticated and
fully mature artist at the peak of his powers, spinning off one lush
and gorgeous melody after another against a background of saxophone
and guitar.
Just south of Bahia lies the mountainous, landlocked
state of Minas Gerais, whose geography and location are a key to the
music of Milton Nascimento, the most gifted singer and songwriter to
come out of the Brazilian interior over the last generation. As
Nascimento tells the story, he grew up listening to radio stations
from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, which came in so weak and
scratchy in his hometown that he and his friends could barely make out
the melodies of songs they liked. So when Nascimento and his
associates, known collectively as the Clube da Esquina, or Corner
Club, began performing in public, they had to invent their own
harmonies for those songs.
More than 30 years later, exotic, unexpected
harmonies are still the backbone of Nascimento's music. Newly remixed
versions of his masterpieces Clube da Esquina and Clube da Esquina 2
were released in the '90s; they bring out all of the haunting beauty
of songs like "Cais" and "Olho d'Agua," many of which have been
subsequently recorded by artists ranging from Brazilian pop singers to
American jazz stalwarts. The disc Milagre dos Peixes reaches nearly
the same level of accomplishment by emphasizing Nascimento's
extraordinary vocal range (which often moves from an ethereal
falsetto to a wistful baritone in the same song), his clever phrasing
and his fondness for wordless singing.
Nascimento also provides the foundation and
inspiration for Native Dancer, one of the first of what would
subsequently become many collaborations between Brazilian and American
musicians--and which stands even today as probably the most successful
example of that cross-cultural phenomenon. Recorded in the mid-1970s
with saxophonist Wayne Shorter and pianist Herbie Hancock, who were
members of the Miles Davis quintets of the 1960s, the record gives a
jazz treatment to five of Nascimento's compositions and features his
ethereal scat singing on several other tracks. Nearly 15 years later,
Nascimento and Hancock would team up again on Miltons, which contains
reworked versions of such canons of the Nascimento songbook as "San
Vicente" and "Bola de Gude."
Over the years, several members of Nascimento's
circle have struck out on their own, heading mostly in a jazzy
direction. Drummer Robertinho Silva, regarded as one of the top
percussionists in the world, mixes a variety of American and Brazilian
rhythms on a pair of sterling solo releases that draw as much from the
Miles Davis band as from Milton Nascimento. Wayne Shorter's Speak No
Evil takes its title from one of Shorter's compositions and features
the author on soprano saxophone but also contains a lilting version of
the classic "Brasil." The same recipe is used to great effect on Shot
on Goal, which includes the Thelonius Monk standard "Bemsha Swing"
done as a jaunty Carnival samba and another excursion into Miles Davis
territory with "Nefertiti."
Listening to the music of guitarist Toninho Horta can
be deceptive. Many of the songs on his two main releases in the United
States, Diamond Land and Moonstone, are so gentle, so relaxed that it
may be tempting to consign them to the realm of elevator music. But a
closer hearing reveals Horta to be, as his friend and admirer Pat
Metheny puts it, "one of the most harmonically sophisticated and
melodically satisfying Brazilian composers of recent times," capable
of writing "chord progressions that defy gravity." Horta's remarkable
talents are probably best displayed on a subtle, jazz-based trio
outing, Once I Loved, that features several of his own compositions as
well as his take on American standards such as "Stella by Starlight"
and "My Funny Valentine."
As should be clear by now, Brazilian music is a universe of
its own, full of different innovators and genres--which may make the
thought of plunging in unprepared simply too daunting. If that is the
case, any number of introductory compilations are available, the best
and most comprehensive of which is probably Brasil: A Century of
Song. This four-disc set, accompanied by a 48-page booklet that offers
biographical information on the artists, explanations of styles and
translations of the lyrics, starts with Carmen Miranda, ends with
Milton Nascimento and manages to touch on all the ground in
between. Even for more experienced listeners this labor of love offers
attractions: some of the songs selected here are not found on other
recordings available in the United States, and a few are rarities even
in Brazil.
Also worth exploring is another four-volume
collection that looks at some of the main genres of Brazilian music,
devoting a separate record to each. Bossa Nova Brasil includes some of
today's top artists singing bossa nova standards and Nordeste Brasil
focuses on the folk-based styles of the Northeast.
But the two most stirring discs in the set are Samba
Brasil and Afro Brasil, both highly danceable sets that bring to mind
the old Brazilian adage that "anyone who doesn't like samba is either
sick in the head or lame in the feet." A related disc, Canta Brasil:
The Great Brazilian Songbook, shifts attention to composers,
accentuating the work of the Bahia and Nascimento clans.
Most other compilations tend to focus more narrowly
on a particular period or style. For instance, David Byrne, former
leader of the New Wave rock band Talking Heads, has put out a "Brazil
Classics" series on his Luaka Bop label, reflecting his own particular
tastes. The first disc, Beleza Tropical, is a survey of mainstream
Brazilian pop, leaning heavily on Caetano Veloso and other
tropicalistas, while the second, O Samba, focuses on the principal
contemporary samba performers. The more traditional sound of Rio's
main samba school performers, on the other hand, gets a fuller
treatment on Rounder Records' delightful Brazil--Roots Samba, complete
with the unison chorus singing and large percussion section that is
the Rio trademark.
Several overview discs also concentrate on
forró, the accordion-driven dance music native to Brazil's
northeast, the poorest and most backward part of the country. Urbane
Brazilians traditionally have looked down on this style of music as
crude and lower-class: indeed, one compilation released in the United
States deftly skewers that prejudice, proudly taking Forró:
Music for Maids and Taxi Drivers as its title.
That peculiarly Brazilian chauvinism, however, is no
reason for Americans not to enjoy a frenetic style of music that David
Byrne aptly describes as "a mixture of ska with polka, in overdrive"
in his liner notes to the excellent Forró: Music of the
Brazilian Northeast. The focus here is on the late Luiz Gonzaga, the
king of forró, who also figures prominently on Asa Branca:
Accordion Forró from Brazil.
So feel free to explore, with the assurance that at
every turn you are likely to find music as exciting, as sophisticated
as that produced anywhere in the world, that moves the body as much as
the soul. Perhaps it is best to let Antônio Carlos Jobim have
the last word on the extraordinary musicality of his country and its
people: "What really swings is the music of the United States, Cuba,
the Caribbean and vicinity, and of course, Brazil," he often
said. "The rest is all waltzes."
Larry Rohter is the Caribbean bureau chief for
The New York Times and a former music critic for The Washington
Post.
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