Beto Villares is a very cool and unassuming music and soundtrack producer from SP, Brazil. He's the architect behind Grammy-nominated Brazilian siren CéU's 2007 debut and part of a web of like-minded musicians and producers behind the city's creative renaissance. In this lengthy interview, Beto talked about his own project -- just released in the U.S. by Six Degrees -- and the mundane magic that still happens in Brazil when people with instruments and good vibes get together on any street corner to play. Look out for an upcoming feature story in Global Rhythm magazine (www.globalrhythm.net).
GGC:I love this album, it’s eclectic, there are so many nuances, it’s beautiful, and most of all very cutting-edge. In many ways it’s a producer’s album. How was this album born?
BV: I always wanted to do music of my own, not only for somebody else as a producer. The greatest inspiration came from Música do Brasil, which is that project I did in ’98, from ’98 to 2000, and when I traveled all around Brazil with anthropologists and a filming crew and recording equipment and we recorded over 400 tunes from all kinds of styles. I had all of my influences from working in a studio in São Paulo, which is a huge city with a lot of information, but this project opened my ears to the diversity of local things because we are very centered here in São Paulo. It’s amazing because we usually don’t know much about what goes on all around Brazil and there are so many different styles and different ways of writing and different reasons for making music. So this was kind of a topic for me, for the album. I wanted to do my music because when you go around there are so many local feasts, and celebrations where people make music and they don’t really realize they’re making music, they’re doing something for a party, for a celebration, for a religion, and if you ask them what is this music you’re playing, they’re not going to even call it music, they’re going to call it some other name. I really felt that I wanted to do my, how do you say, this was my own celebration for music. I’m not related to any style, I’m very open-minded, I have a lot of influences, I wanted to put them to use. It really maybe made it more a producer’s album because I didn't want to go inside a certain style or to close the dualistic, stylistic reference I would like to have in this album. And also after this project I came out with a lot of friends from all over Brazil, who contributed to the music somehow.
GGC:Going back to Música do Brasil was there a moment that stands out during your travels, a specific situation that was pivotal in influencing your musical formation?
BV:There were a lot of them. There were two things that really shaped me during this project. One, is what I was telling you before, we are very used to having music as something that you have to practice and then you have to work and then you have to earn your life and when you go and see people playing for other reasons which are only to have fun, and also to have a compromise with some kind of celebration, that was really moving for me. I think I have a little bit of that in everything I do now, even if it’s a soundtrack, I think I’m just doing this because I want to have fun with this. It’s my job, OK, but if it’s only that I’d rather not do it so most of the time I’m really looking to have fun and after being connected with music that’s been done I could feel that response in some places for my album, even if it’s cosmopolitan or if it’s different from any traditions, people all around are able to listen to something in it, there’s something that connects with people all around here that made me really happy. And I think the second thing that was very important for me is that usually here we have a separation of good music, commercial music, bad music. Traditional music has always been something good and to be preserved and commercial music is all very bad music and I started to learn at that point that it’s not all that bad. Of course there’s a lot of commercial music that’s only local, you know only regional, they’re never going to reach out of that region of Brazil, but it’s not only trash, so I learned to see good things in the brega music from the north in the newer modifications of the traditions and also the vision of, the notion that tradition is something that is alive so it must change to remain alive. If it doesn’t change it dies and it gets boring, it gets like a museum where it’s cold or something. So, it’s more like these concepts came to my mind. But as far as a particular place there were so many. Some of the people there were really wonderful people, and you want to be by their side because they’re living in the poorest places you can imagine but they are so happy and they’re happy not because they don’t care but because they have music, they have relationships with people around them and that makes them important. So like Dona Neusa who is from Maranhão, she is the most fantastic woman I’ve ever met. She said some funny things in the interview that had never been said. She’s so full of life, she’s so happy, and the music she does is so beautiful and it’s improvised. This is something that happens a lot in Brazil which is oral improvisation so [for instance] they have some phrases they use here and there but they’re pretty much improvising between the rhymes. But that’s not only… usually people who know something about Brazilian music relate that to the cantadores de viola, but there’s like more than 50 styles that have improvisation on their bases. Siba, who is my very close friend and his is another album I produced for Ambulante, he is very connected to maracatú and ciranda which are from Pernambuco and he’s the greatest improviser I know. I went to Dona Neusa’s home after the project was ready and I decided to go there to bring her the book and a CD as a gift. I went there and met up with her and we were walking in the city and she was just talking like she was singing because she was talking and telling me things always using rhymes and she was, I can’t remember now, but it was like magic for me, it was a magical moment. It was after the project was done I was very alone traveling and I went to bring her the book and it was an amazing moment just talking a little bit, listening to her talk about things. She’s always looking to the beautiful things. Look to the beautiful things or try to make fun of the other.
GGC:So it’s fair to say then that you are inspired by the role that music plays in people’s daily lives and the, I guess visceral connection that they have to music. It’s kind of like people’s lifeline.
BV:Yeah. Like it’s funny because in all the musical traditions people say Eu vou brincar – I’m gonna play, but play in English is tocar and brincar. But they are quite different for us. Tocar música is to play music, brincar is just to play like a kid, they say Eu vou brincar, they call themselves brincantes, which is player but in the other sense. So this is all over Brazil. People say I’m gonna brincar carnaval, I’m gonna brincar maracatú, and this playing although it’s playing, it really is the most important thing of their lives, it’s like a virtual place for their lives where they go away, so they can become kings, the woman can become a queen, they can become a clown, they can sing, they can drink, they can do a lot of things that life doesn’t allow you to do if you’re just [dealing] in reality all the time.”
GGC:Anything is possible…
BV:Yeah, it really is. That compromise is the most important thing, and there are not even words that you can put onto a CD. Of course it has changed because a lot of people record everything so this relationship starts to change. Even us in our project, we were a huge crew coming to a small place and sometimes people didn’t understand very well and they would say but am I going to be able to see this show, but in most cases they weren’t worried at all because they were very fulfilled with what they do and they’re not interested in anything else. And sometimes they become artists and promoters of artists, which is great, there are people, like the people who play with Siba whose band is called Fuloresta do Samba, they were sugar cane cortadores (cutters) until they were like 55-years-old then they became professional musicians. They already played their whole lives, maracatú, ciranda, coco, but they weren’t professional, they were getting together and playing because they do that, like I said, like a way of life. Then this new situation where they are considered musicians, they are recognized as professional musicians, they travel the whole world, they go to stages, and even if they don’t understand too much, they feel very happy and it’s something I think they never imagined.
GGC:When I listen to this album, it feels as if I’m embarking on a voyage and anything can happen. At the same time there’s an exquisite artistry at play as if the album as a whole was meticulously sculpted. There’s an almost perfect balance between spontaneity and something much more deliberate and deep. Was this something you thought out or did you just arrive there naturally?
BV:I think I don’t have what I’m doing so clear but I’m very happy to listen to it after because I don’t want to go too much inside the production, to lose the spontaneity. But also I don’t like to just do something that’s been done over and over again, even if it’s beautiful, OK somebody playing and singing it’s already beautiful that’s why I have one or two tunes in the album which are mainly that, but I think I really like to mess around with things in a way that they’re going to be happening. I start in a different way as I would if I was doing a regular pop tune, in which case I would be thinking drums, bass and keyboards. I like to think what the sounds asks me to, like a domino game, what I’m gonna do next. But I never thought so much Oh I don’t want to lose spontaneity, I think I’m lucky maybe, really because it’s just the way I do it. One thing for sure I can tell you is I don’t think you get this doing things too quickly. I think we need a little bit of time to change things, to not change things if you are in doubt, to throw things away and to let new ideas come. CéU’s album was a process, a very long process, not only because we wanted but also because nobody was paying us so I had to do a lot of other jobs and that is the same with mine. But maybe those are the best things, those things you’re not doing in a rush, you just have the opportunity to think a little bit more but also there’s a point where you should not go further or you’re gonna listen so much, you’re gonna think so much and it’s going to lose it’s spontaneity. So I think it’s a bit of luck and a bit of also, because I am worried, I want to do things with this time, with this different timing. Even when I do soundtracks, if it’s a very close director like Cao Hamburger in The Year My Parents Went On Vacation, I was doing a lot of jobs, I was coming from another film, and a record, and I have this label here which I don’t do a lot but there’s a lot of things that we did run and stuff and then I told Cao, I can’t do this soundtrack in one month and a half, we need more time. And he was like Oh, I don’t know if we have it. But later he was like all the time Thank you for saying that. So I think the same thing about albums, taking a little time. I’m doing CéU’s second album and another album this year, using the same process. We had two periods of concentration in the beginning of the year and then close to July and then we stopped again also because she had her baby. I just love working with this kind of approach in some projects, you know that might be the one thing that makes you go a little further is having a little more time.
GGC:When will CéU’s new album come out?
BV:We’re going to finalize it this November and December, maybe we’ll have to go, start a little late in December and January, and then it’s up to the labels, I don’t exactly know when it’s going to be released, but it’s going to be ready in the beginning of next year.
GGC:And it’s coming out on Six Degrees?
BV:Yes, that’s for sure.
GGC:Going back to your album. I also found that the arrangements are very unique and there are a lot of details, sonic embellishments, that I would have a hard time describing and I was wondering if you could briefly describe some of the sounds that are sampled in the album.
BV:Are you going to ask specifically?
GGC:Not off the top of my head.
BV:One thing we do a lot, and also DJ Marco is sitting right beside me, he’s a great friend and he plays in CéU’s band too, and what we do a lot with him is we record a lot of things, it can be vocals, horns, drums, anything, and then I make a mix of these instruments and give it to him and he puts it into a CD and then he puts it into like a turntable for CDs and he does all kinds of crazy things with that. Sometimes we can’t even recognize what the sound was, it came from a voice or sometimes we take something out of a friend’s album and sometimes we have produced sounds with different things like, I don’t know, a bunch of coins throwing them on the table. Sometimes if we have a lot of crazy instruments we don’t know how to play in the regular way we find our way, like a hurdy gurdy (known as a wheel fiddle). We have Mexican instruments, ukuleles, so we’ll play a melody on the ukulele instead of on the guitar and then put some effects. I record it on a very old recording machine and when I play it back it sounds out of tune -- a lot of processing so it makes even more evident the production in the sound. After that we start finding ways of doing that live, so that’s another stage, another part of the whole story. But we don’t worry about how I’m going to play that onstage, you have so much freedom. I heard producer Mario Caldato (who’s produced albums for the Beastie Boys, Seu Jorge, Bebel Gilberto, and Marcelo D2, amongst others) once say Music always wants to grow. And I understood that in my own way. If you allow it to grow, it wants to grow in a lot of directions. That’s something that really turns me on, because there’s so much music production today, professional, half-professional, amateur, and people doing a lot of things, and then sometimes you listen to a guy who’s doing something different and it’s fresh and then it makes you happy because we can’t listen to the same all over again, the same sound. That’s what I think. Also we were talking about collaborations. That’s something very important too. We’re in a very rich moment I think here in Sao Paulo. If you go back like 15 years, there weren’t so many people doing things in connection here. We had what we called Brazilian rock, Paralamas, Titãs those bands from Rio and from São Paulo, some bands from other places, but those people weren’t connected and I think what’s happened is that people from Pernambuco started coming to São Paulo, and other people came like Catatau from Cidadão Instigado (a band from Ceará in the northeast of Brazil), and then people from Instituto were kids fifteen years ago and they became men and started making music with their influence which is already different from mine. And I think that created a scene which is very happy, which is happy in the sense that it’s happening, people are friends, they’re collaborating in a way that we saw in Pernambuco, we can say that it’s really true here, we can see a little bit of Catatau in CéU’s work, you can hear CéU on Instituto, you can hear my contributions in rap albums, so it’s an alternative scene, it’s not mainstream, what I’m talking about is people making interesting music who are connected to each other, in most cases contributing with friends. That makes me think well maybe Rica [Amabis] could do something here that’s different. And even Gui, Gui works with us all the time.
GGC:Yes, I interviewed him [Gui Amabis] not too long ago and we talked a lot about that, the scene in São Paulo with the collaborations from musicians from Pernambuco how it’s very rooted in friendship.
BV:Yeah it’s so great.
GGC:Was it surprising for you that CéU had such global success with her debut?
BV:Yes. It was a big surprise for me because, I think because of everything we talked about. I’m not doing the regular pop music, rock, or not the regular Brazilian music. And I couldn’t imagine, I know her potential, I know she’s great as a composer and as a singer and everything, but I don’t trust too much this kind of thing and also because the whole record business is going so downward, I was really not expecting it. But I think it grew into a size that is very good, it’s not huge but it’s good for her and it’s good for me, it’s good for everybody I think. She’s very happy with the way things turned out.
GGC:How did you get your start in music, did you first start out composing for television or film or did you first start out as a record producer?
BV:I went to music school in the university and then before completing that I went to the United States. I wanted to practice more guitar, I stayed one year in Los Angeles and then I came back and I realized I wouldn’t be a great guitarist or something like I imagined before. I started to realize that I really liked to compose and then I started working in a studio that made music advertisements for movies, that’s when I met Antonio [Pinto] and we worked a lot. I wasn’t very happy because it was like working fifteen hours a day in advertising but it was a huge learning process for me in a studio, working with techniques and building relationships on the job so it was like a university. And then, again I think I’m the luckiest guy in the world, I got out of this studio world and went on this trip and worked on this project for three years, the whole process of traveling and recording and then after taking a break from this project I had to take some time to come back and do what came out as being my album.
GGC:How does growing up and living in such a schizophrenic city shape your artistic vision?
BV:It’s funny we have this pollution, we have this noise, we have this criminality, everything here is tension, but I can’t imagine living anywhere else. São Paulo is a huge city and like most huge cities there are nice parts, ugly parts, there are parts where you don’t want to go at all, but as a kid I had a very good life here. I don’t know if my two boys are going to have the same life but I could go all around skating, riding bicycles during the day, walk around, I think that changed a little bit… São Paulo has it all here. And I see also people who live in very hard places, very poor places, but they love it here because you have so much culture and they live for that. That’s the way the hip-hop culture works here. It’s a way of having cultural exchanges. And São Paulo has it. It’s a lot of things. It’s hard, it’s aggressive, it’s noisy, but people from here when they go out to smaller places they [realize] they need this mess here, like if this mess is what moves on, moves our heads, moves our ideas. Would I be able to live somewhere else, to have a healthier life? I don’t know. Especially now when we have so many musicians from everywhere here, if I want to record with Cuban musicians I have some close friends who play real well. Of course it’s not the same thing as being closest to Cuba but we have them. Japanese, yes we have them, Italian also, all kinds of Brazilian music, samba, music from the northeast, maracatú, so it’s very anthropophagic.
GGC:What do mean when you say that Brazil is like a bastard culture and how does that translate into the musical landscape?
BV:People mix things and they don’t think about it. So if you go the Amazon you’re going to see indigenous people talking their language and dancing to electronic music. So it’s that irresponsibility of saying OK I like this and I like that and let’s put them together and make music with it. And we hear a lot of that in our history even before tropicalia our culture has to do with that. So you think you see a tradition that came from Portugal, that maybe came from Portugal like Bumba Meu Boi mixed with congada which is African, from a Congo celebration, which itself was already an imitation of the Portuguese chords in Africa and then you mix that with an African religion, that’s no longer the original African religion because Africans came all mixed from different places, they didn’t have their original knowledge or culture but they created another one. We had this already mixed culture that would mix with white when the landlord’s daughter would like to go to the senzala (slave quarters) and listen to the music. That’s the way we created our music, by mixing things with irresponsibility, that’s what I feel. And it’s happening all over Brazilian cities. Techno Brega parties now a days are not the same thing, it’s not traditional. But it has the same flavor. People doing this take brega tunes, which are like pretty much like jovem guarda tunes we had, and then they speed it up in an awful way, but they like it, it makes them feel they are a little bit American or something. And then you see the old guys from other traditions, which you would imagine because they play old samba that they wouldn’t like these new things and you talk to them and they say No, that’s great, that’s people having fun. So I think it’s a very interesting country if you want to look at it without preconceitos [prejudice].
