Rita Peixoto and Carlos Fuchs
Na Minha Cara, or In My Face
(Independent)
Ilê Aiyê
Ilê Aiyê-Canto Negro
(Estúdio Eldorado)
Ilê Aiyê
Ilê Aiyê-25 Anos
(Natasha Records)
Hermeto Pascoal
Eu e Eles
(Radio MEC)
Carlos Malta e Pife Muderno
Carlos Malta e Pife Muderno
(Rob Digital)
Chico César
Beleza Mano
(MZA)
Cascabulho
Fome Dá Dor da Cabeça, or Hunger Gives Headache
(Mangroove)
It’s been a rumor for years and now it’s finally happening. It’s Brazil Year! Jazz Fest 2000 is spotlighting the music and culture of Brazil just as Brazil is in the midst of celebrating its 500th birthday! (They’re counting from when they were discovered). New Orleans is joining in the celebration! This is not to say that we haven’t had some wonderful connections with Brazilian music in the last year: Gilberto Gil wowed us at House of Blues; Snug Harbor brought us Carlos Malta; at Café Brasil we got to see Chiko Queiroga and Antônio Rogério from the state of Sergipe, in the northeast of Brazil; there were a whole bunch of wonderful Brazilian musicians in town for the IAJE convention; there are our own wonderful New Orleans/Brazilian ensembles, like Casa Samba, Blake Amos and Saudade (Blake Amos and Curtis Pierre of Casa Samba have separately been making Brazilian music in this city since 1985!), and Ricardo Crespo’s Sol Brasil. UNO and the University of Bahia, UFBA, have even started an exchange program, and Ellis Marsalis and the UNO Jazz Orquestra are slated to perform in Brazil in May as part of the exchange! And it seems like everybody on the local jazz scene has at least one Brazilian song in their repertoire, or some influences. So, we’re ready. Our appetites are whetted, and Jazz Fest promises to deliver.
Our love affair with Brazil actually starts off the week before Jazz Fest with the premier New Orleans performances of vocalist Rita Peixoto and pianist, composer, arranger Carlos Fuchs. Rita and Carlos are at the center of the cutting edge independent recording movement in Rio, which is where much of the best current Brazilian music is coming from. And a lot of the most innovative independent releases are coming out of Rita and Carlos’s home recording studio, Toca da Raposa, with Carlos at the controls. The first time I saw Rita perform, she was singing in Rio with the wonderful samba vocal quintet, Arranco, a parallel career for Rita. Rita had the solo, and she knocked the crowd over with her strength of delivery and the emotional impact and beauty of her voice. Carlos, while classically trained, has his feet, or should I say his fingers, firmly planted in Brazil. The repertoire of their current release as a duo, Na Minha Cara, or In My Face features all new, previously unrecorded material, with the exception of one classic Chico Buarque number. Rita and Carlos are very generous performers, and the making of this CD was a joyous communal undertaking in which they involved their wonderful circle of composer and musician friends, some of the freshest creative talent happening in Rio or anywhere, including Mathilda Kóvak, Marcos Sacramento, Paulo Baiano, Paulo Brandão, Sidon Silva, Celso Alvim. Everyone involved talks about the recording sessions as the best time they’ve ever had in the studio, and the results prove it. Stories abound, like the table story. While they were recording the cut “Ouro”, an Antonio Saraiva composition, a specific percussion sound was needed by the percussionist, and that was the sound made by a certain table at a neighborhood bar. And it had to be that one specific table, no other would do, and they had to have it right at that moment, right then! So, the bar owner was called, and off they rushed in a taxi to get the table and bring it back to the studio! And that’s what you hear on the finished product, a remarkable batucada played by four percussionists on this now famous table! Rita Peixoto and Carlos Fuchs will be here in a trio format, joined by guitarist Rodrigo Campello, another of Brazil’s most innovative composer/performers, who co-produced and collaborated on Na Minha Cara.
And then comes Jazz Fest itself, with its presentation of Brazilian music and culture, an ambitious project, featuring six bands in all, and daily Brazilian-themed panel discussions and cultural presentations in the Brazilian Pavilion. To present Brazilian music alone is a daunting task. It’s not just samba and bossa nova, neither of which, surprisingly, are being featured in the Jazz Fest Brazil Year line-up. Brazil is larger than the continental U.S., and its regional differences are vast and many, each region with its own unique and amazing musical traditions and accompanying body of folklore. And these musical traditions not only exist right along side the sophisticated urban sounds but are constantly being made fresh and new, reinvented and combined in unusual ways, which is one of the many charms of Brazilian music. Where do you start?
Jazz Fest started in the obvious place, Bahia, in the northeast of Brazil. New Orleans, Louisiana and Salvador, Bahia have long been considered cultural sister cities. Both were colonial centers of slave trade, and the African heritage is still alive in both cities today. Mãe Stella de Oxossi, from Bahia, is a world renowned High Priestess of the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé. She celebrated sixty years of initiation in 1999. She’ll be at the Fair Grounds on the second Friday to bless the Festival along with New Orleans Voodoo Priestess Ava Kay Jones. They’ll be joined by Cléo Martins, a member of Mãe Stella’s terreiro in Bahia, and by Brazilian percussionist, Jorge Alabe, who works locally with Casa Samba, and is a master in the music and rhythms of Candomblé. Voodoo and Candomblé share the same Yoruba roots and are really the same religion. This blessing is a stunning connection between our two cities. And, according to Jô Iazzetti, the Brazilian Cultural Coordinator for New Orleans Jazz Fest, that’s how Jazz Fest is approaching Brazil, through its direct connections with New Orleans.
From the beginning of the Brazil Year concept, Jazz Fest wanted to bring a bloco-afro (Afro-Brazilian carnival drum group) out of Salvador, Bahia. Olodum delighted us at Jazz Fest back in 1995, and this year Jazz Fest is bringing the first of the blocos-afros, and undeniably the most beautiful, Ilê Aiyê. The co-founder and president, Antônio Carlos dos Santos, “Vovô”, sowed the seeds for this appearance with his visit to New Orleans in 1998 under the auspices of the International Visitors Program of the U.S. Information Agency. Vovô, the son of Candomblé High Priestess Mãe Hilda, is a well respected community leader and activist. In November of 1974 Ilê was founded, not only as a protest against the racial discrimination of Bahia’s traditional carnival, but also as a way to reaffirm and celebrate their African heritage. In 1999, Ilê Aiyê marked 25 years of existence. Along the way they’ve developed a number of social and educational programs to benefit the people in their community, but the strongest tool at their disposal is the music, those mesmerizing Afro-Bahian drums, rooted in the rhythms of Candomblé. There is always a message in their songs, but hey!—you can dance to it! They have four musical releases to their credit. The first one, Ilê Aiyê-Canto Negro features a wonderful live recording of Ilê from 1974 with Gilberto Gil on vocals. On their current CD, Ilê Aiyê-25 Anos, they celebrate their anniversary with special guests Milton Nascimento and Daúde. Ilê Aiyê, unlike many of the blocos-afros that came after them, has never sold out. They did not go electric and jump on the top 20 commercial Axé Music bandwagon which is currently polluting Brazilian musical waters. They have remained true to their mission of preserving the African traditions by “rescuing the self-esteem and improving the level of critical awareness through entertainment.” They parade during carnival in Bahia with thousands, and will be at Jazz Fest with 17 members. But you can bet they’ll pack a punch.
The rest of the Brazilian acts coming for Jazz Fest are either from other parts of the northeast of Brazil, or have strong northern Brazilian influences. It’s a crime to put either Hermeto Pascoal or Carlos Malta in a category called “the rest of the Brazilian acts.” But while Carlos Malta is from Rio, the group he’s coming here with is called Pife Muderno, a modern flute band based on the tradition of the Bandinha de Pífanos do Caruaru, hailing from the state of Pernambuco in the northeast of Brazil. Hermeto, who lives in Rio, was born in the northeast of Brazil on June 22, 1936 in the town of Lagoa da Canoa de Município de Arapiraca, in the state of Alagoas, right below the state of Pernambuco.
Hermeto Pascoal is a one and only. A musical genius. He’s a legendary figure at this point, with a cult following around the world, including in New Orleans, and at least three unofficial web sites, all of them maintained by fans, one of them a guy in Finland! Legend has it that Hermeto learned music as a young child while traveling by horseback from village to village playing music with his father! For Hermeto there are no rules. Anything can be an instrument on which to make music—a cup of water, squeeze dolls, a tea pot, a sewing machine, piglets, well, anything! Hermeto masterfully plays a multitude of normal instruments as well, like piano, accordion, flutes, saxes, percussion, guitar, although he doesn’t always approach them in a normal way. On his long-awaited recent release Eu e Eles, the first since 1992’s already classic Festa dos Deuses, Hermeto plays all of the instruments himself, the traditional and the “found.” Hermeto does go out there. There’s some video footage of Hermeto out in his backyard in Rio, and he’s playing his flute in an improvised duet with the frogs! And it works! Hermeto has added to his mystique and further developed his musical philosophy with a compositional technique he calls “Som da Aura.” He uses recorded bits and pieces of real life sounds, the “music of human speech,” or the sounds of those frogs and piglets. Everything is music for him. Hermeto will be performing with his Brazilian band, six including himself, at the Fair Grounds on Friday, May 5th. And later that night he’ll be performing solo at Snug Harbor. These are rare opportunities to experience the “Sorcerer” himself.
Carlos Malta has created a big stir on the local music scene, and for good reason. He’s great! He’s very personable not only in real life but also on the stage, where he’s a dynamic presence. This shaman of the woodwinds plays all of them, from a little Chinese flute called the Di-Zi, to the bass flute, to all of the saxes. Malta comes from the Hermeto school of music, having performed with Hermeto for twelve years. Playing with Hermeto isn’t just going to rehearsals and gigs. It’s like playing with Sun Ra, you live it! Malta has made three trips to New Orleans this past year to do workshops and to perform at Snug Harbor with his New Orleans trio of Ricky Sebastian on drums, James Singleton on bass and Larry Sieberth on piano. Now we’ll get to see him with one of his Brazilian ensembles, Pife Muderno. Pife is a quintet made up of some of Brazil’s best instrumentalists, notably monster percussionist Marcos Suzano, whose main instrument is the pandeiro, or tambourine. You’ll have to see the Brazilian approach to the playing of it, as played by the master, in order to believe it! The CD Carlos Malta e Pife Muderno carries on the northeastern Brazilian tradition of the Bandinha de Pífanos, mentioned earlier, a tradition similar in this country to Mississippian Napoleon Strickland’s Drum and Fife Corp. But Malta has updated it and made it his own, with original compositions, classics from Hermeto and Edu Lobo, and Guinga, homages to the indigenous Indians (whose flute music is really at the core of this genre), and also to the father of Baião, Luis Gonzaga.
Vocalist, guitarist, composer Chico César also has strong northeastern Brazilian roots, born in the state of Paraíba, one state up from Pernambuco. His music is a fusion of the traditional musical forms of the region with rock, pop, MPB, reggae and African influences, creating his own unique blend. He, like Carlos Malta and Pife Muderno, and also like Hermeto Pascoal, quotes the Bandinha de Pífanos do Caruaru in his music, although each one quotes it differently. Chico also lists some unusual sources for his inspiration, like the Jackson 5, Malcolm X and Chairman Mao! Another important influence for César is Tropicalismo, a movement in the late ’60s which revolutionized Brazilian music and arts, and set the stage for all the current fusing and mixing of traditional and new material that’s going on in Brazilian music. One of the songs on his CD, Beleza Mano, is called “Espinha Dorsal do Mim” or “My Backbone”. The lyrics are an example of concrete poetry, reminiscent of Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil’s work in the same vein back in the ’60s. Chico’s lyrics draw an actual picture of a spinal cord! Chico’s hit “Mama Africa” can be found on his CD called “Cuscuz Clá”. Chico César will be performing with a large band of nine.
The story goes that during World War II there was a U.S. air base in the north of Brazil. (There’s another version of this story with a sugar plantation instead of the air base). On weekends the base would have a dance party, open “for all.” The Brazilian pronunciation turned “for all” into “forrô”! Forrô is traditional party and dance music from the north/northeast of Brazil, originally played on an accordion, a triangle, and a big drum called the zabumba. The seven-piece band Cascabulho represents this tradition, but as with many current Brazilian bands, they’ve updated it. While the traditional rhythms are there, forrô, baião, côco de roda, maracatú, embolada, and catimbó among others, the rock and urban elements are evident too, in the spirit of the late, great Chico Science, who with his group Nação Zumbi, created the modern genre of Manguebeat in the early ’90s. Manguebeat is based in the city of Recife, Pernambuco, which was built on a mangrove swamp, or “mangue”, hence, Manguebeat. Cascabulho’s current CD, one of the top ten current Manguebeat releases in Recife, is called Fome Dá Dor da Cabeça, or Hunger Gives Headache. This is another group that has a message in its music that you can dance to. Cascabulho member Silvério Pessoa is a schoolteacher in Recife, and in a recent interview on a Manguebeat website he said, “A lot of the students I teach are sons and daughters of working class people and many of them are the kids of Brazil’s landless people’s movement. So I relate easily to the problems they have, and I find myself writing a lot of the band’s lyrics about the landless people.” Cascabulho will be very busy in April. Right before our Jazz Fest, they’ll be at the Houston International Festival, which is also spotlighting Brazil. One of Cascabulho’s Jazz Fest performances is on the Fais Do Do Stage. Jazz Fest is pointing out the connection between Cajun music and forrô, both being traditional forms which use the accordion as the main instrument. On the first Friday of Jazz Fest there will be a zydeco/Brazilian Accordion demonstration at the Brazilian Pavilion involving Cascabulho’s accordionist! Cascabulho will also be making a quick run over to Lafayette to participate in the Festival International de Louisiane.
Maracatú Nação Pernambuco will be coming to Jazz Fest with a troupe 26 strong, and in full regalia! They are a carnival group from Olinda, a colonial city just north of Recife. Maracatú is a tradition coming from carnival in Pernambuco, the ceremonial music used in the coronation and presentation of the African Kings and Queens and their courts. The first recorded African coronation ceremony in Pernambuco dates back to 1786! For the African slaves, it was cultural resistance, a way to keep their own culture alive. And it wasn’t just carnival play-acting. The crowned Kings and Queens were actually the real leaders of the slave community. Maracatú is also a specific rhythm enjoying a revival in Brazilian music, as are many of the rhythms of the region. Maracatú Nação Pernambuco has been performing for ten years now, and parades under the banner of the African Orixá, or deity, Xangô. They continue to keep the historic regional tradition of cultural resistance alive. And, you can dance to it!
Katrina Geenen hosts “Tudo Bem,” the Brazilian radio show, Saturdays at 2 p.m. on WWOZ. “Tudo Bem,” in Portuguese, means “All Right!”
