Mariza Brings Fado to the World

Photo by Isabel Pinto

In recent years Portugal's longing fado music has gotten the international recognition it's long deserved. Much credit goes to the genre's most contemporary exponent Mariza, who herself is at the crossroads of diverse global influences. On her fourth studio album Terrra, fado's reigning queen -- who was born in Mozambique and raised singing in her father's taverna in Lisbon -- enlisted Spain's most in-demand producer Javier Limón, known for his artistry and fusions on the albums of artists such as Buika, Bebo Valdés, Diego El Cigala, and Paco de Lucía, among many others. On Terra Mariza infuses fado with loads of universal appeal by collaborating with a who's who list of high-ranking international artists, including mercurial singer Buika in a duet, Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés, Brazilian luminary Ivan Lins, Cape Verdean icon Tito Paris, and Portuguese rocker Rui Veloso. A beautifully crafted album under the impeccable direction of Limón, Terra ends on a whimsical note with a playful moment between Mariza and Lins, doing their version of "Smile," a Charlie Chaplin composition, on which they had no idea they were being recorded. What follows is an interview with Mariza. Her feisty personality comes through, leaving little doubt that Mariza is a musical force to be reckoned with.

GGC: You’ve stated in previous interviews that you express fado from a different perspective. How so?

M: Well some media write things that I clearly don’t say exactly in that way. What I said is that I don’t call myself a fado singer. I call myself a Portuguese singer and I’m still respecting the basis and the lines of what I learned since I was a child but more and more I have my own perspective about this music. I have my personality that I put inside and that makes me kind of a vehicle of a culture, respecting bases, lines, roots, everything but having my own personality.

GGC: It’s true, however that you’ve taken fado, which is a genre that has many purists, into a modern era and it’s transcended geography. How do you feel when people say that about you?

M: Well I don’t, how can I say this to you, I don’t judge myself or my records. I prefer that people listen and try to understand because each person has their own way of feeling music or seeing art. In Portugal for example I never had any problems with the things I’ve been doing and what I think is that I’m trying to be kind of a vehicle of a culture of the heartbeat of a country and of a people, showing that the music we do, our culture is not minor, we have a lot to give, it’s very rich. We are in the back of Europe but we have so many things to show, so many things to give. So it’s a little bit difficult when people say I set out to change, I didn’t change anything, I didn’t want to break anything, I was just doing my music.

GGC: But at the same time, it’s very obvious that you’re open to collaborating with other musicians, and incorporating other influences into fado, which is something that happens in all kinds of music all over the world, there is no such thing anymore as a pure genre because everything is so blurred now and I think in a way you represent this future face and sound of fado, which is very global and eclectic. Would you agree with that?

M: I’m sorry they were knocking on my door and for a few seconds I lost you.


GGC: OK, I don’t know where you lost me. I was saying that at the same time, it’s obvious in your new album Terra, that you’re very open to collaborating and to incorporating influences within fado from different styles…

M: Well more and more, I don’t think people go to see, when they go to see a concert of mine, they’re not going to see a fado concert, they’re going to see a Portuguese singer. This album, Terra, the name Terra means land, land because of the music I do, I’m respecting bases, lines, traditions, roots, everything I learned with my feet in my country, in my Portugal. But at the same time I’m bringing 8 years of touring to this record, where I’m exposed to different cultures, musicians, songs, countries, everything is inside of it. This music is organic, it’s music that has movement, it’s not static, it’s music that moves, it’s music that’s in your soul, in your heart, it moves with your emotions. So when you ask me that the only answer I can give you is this. I’m not trying to break any traditions, I’m not trying to be different, I’m just giving my point of view about music and that’s my truth and I would be not sincere, I would be a fake if I didn’t do it.

GGC: Yeah, I’m not saying that you’re doing it in a calculated way, I’m just saying that you’re a product of the kind of world we live in today, which has a much more universal language when it comes to music.

M: Music is music, people like to put names, like this is bossa nova, this is tango, this blues, at the end we are talking about music.

GGC: Yes, we’re talking about feeling…

M: Music is a kind of religion. I remember in my last concert asking people if they knew the person sitting next to them, sometimes people don’t know who’s sitting beside them, the question I ask is if they notice that for one hour or two hours they were connected by the same line, it was the music, emotions, and in some way we were all a family, while for the most part maybe they have different points of view, different political ideas, different colors, different religions, I don’t know, many different things, but for one hour and a half or two hours we were in connection.

GGC: I think that’s what music is meant to be, a connection for people, a communion between the artist and the listener.

M: Yeah.

GGC: Let’s talk about Terra. I find it interesting that you chose Javier Limón to producer the album. How did that come about?

M: I met Javier in a dinner and we started talking about music and suddenly I felt we were on the same wavelength and I decided to introduce him to Lisboa, to listen to a little bit of fado and suddenly we were making a record.

GGC: Wow, I’m sure I missed a lot of details in between.

M: [LAUGHS]

GGC: I read that you invited him to a taverna. Did he play at the taverna? Did he play guitar? Did you listen to him play?

M: Yeah.

GGC: What did you think at that moment?

M: It was Javier playing, Javier is a musician, he lives for music, so for him playing with fado musicians or flamenco musicians, or Brazilian musicians, for him it’s the same thing, for him it’s music.

GGC: I’m sure you’ve heard all of the great albums he's produced and all of the great artists whom he has produced for.

M: Yes.

GGC: He has a very long trajectory in producing for giants in music. Did that come into play at all in making your decision?

M: No. Actually no. That was something that actually made me think about not asking him to do the record. I’m not here to do a commercial thing. My music is very cultural.

GGC: Anyone who knows Javier’s work knows that he doesn’t produce commercial music.

M: Yeah… and um… but then we started really talking about music very seriously and I felt like he was the person to help get in what I was looking to put in there, the message I was trying to send and he was the one who was not afraid of anything, he understood me so well. You know everybody was afraid, like ‘What do you want to do? You want to put what? You want to make what?' Everybody was afraid and suddenly Javier was the one who made me feel very peaceful inside, like ‘Let’s do it, let’s try, let’s see, if we don’t like it we stop.' And I said, ‘This person, I have to trust in him.’ I showed him what I had and then we started working in his studio in Madrid.

GGC: The album is beautiful. I have to say that I’ve been taken aback by it and especially on some of the collaborations. One of them that comes to mind is “Beijo de Saudade” with Cape Verdean icon Tito Paris. What was that like?

M: I know Tito for many, many years, since I was a teenager. He was the first person to show me African music. We are friends, I love Tito as a person and as an artist and I know he has the same feelings for me. So when I decided to sing this morna, I was singing Portuguese and I asked Tito to sing in Criollo, because in some way we are bridging Africa, some parts of which used to be a colony of Portugal, and Portugal, so we cross in the middle of this bridge.

GGC: I also loved “Pequenas Verdades” sang with Buika.

M: With Concha, yeah.

GGC: She’s wonderful. Two divas singing together…

M: She’s fire onstage, she brings the house down.

GGC: And also there’s a collabo with Cuban pianist Chucho Valdés. What was that like?

M: Well Chucho was thinking he was going to be playing something very difficult, you know very jazzy, and suddenly when we say to him ‘No, it’s nothing like that, it’s very simple, we want you to play folk, traditional rhythm from Portugal,’ he was like ‘What?’ And with Chucho you feel the Cuban thing but in a very simple, simple, simple way.

GGC: Well that’s great, he’s known for very complex music.

M: Yeah and this one was not.

GGC: You collaborated with Brazilian singer/songwriter/composer Ivan Lins on “Smile,” a very surprising way to end the album. Very whimsical.

M: Well that was kind of a… we were joking around together, everybody was talking around the studio and Ivan never stopped playing, he’s always on the piano or keyboard, he doesn’t stop, for Ivan everything is music. Let me tell you Ivan doesn’t drive because when he listens to music he crashes. For Ivan music is life, it’s everything, it’s skin, it’s being able to breathe. So all of a sudden he says you know I’m going to do something and you follow me and I said ‘What are you going to do?’ ‘Smile.’ ‘Smile?’ ‘I never played that.’ ‘Oh let’s just have fun.’ And we started playing and we didn’t know we were being recorded, they didn’t stop recording. So we played and when we finished everybody was so serious, looking at us and we looked at each other like ‘We did something wrong.’ And we were like ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’ And everybody was like ‘No… this must be on the record.’ ‘I said no way my English is not good enough to put into the record, I’m not going to sing in English. I don’t know how to do it, we were just having fun with the music.’ For the European album we didn’t include it but for North America we decided to put it. It’s like my obrigada (thank you) to all the people who have been supporting my work and being so wonderful to me, it’s like a kind of present.

The Sounds of Brazil at SXSW

As the number of Latin bands performing at SXSW continues to make impressive gains, this year marks a notable upsurge in Brazilian artists. Close to 30 bands have been confirmed to play at Austin's yearly indie music fest (March 18-22), bumping Brazil up among the top five foreign countries with the largest contingents to descend on Texas' coolest city. Many of them are going the route of Sao Paulo electro-pop darlings CSS, by singing in english. From the cute alterna-pop of Ceara's own Telerama to the irreverent alt-rock of Vinil Laranja, a band from Belem, this year's lineup reflects the diversity of a new generation of Brazilian artists who no longer feel pigeonholed by the sheer size of their country and its linguistic isolation within Latin America. I spoke to publicist Tracy Mann of MG Limited to get the lowdown on the Brazilian invasion. Mann, a SXSW consultant, is an authority on Brazilian music who has worked tirelessly to raise its profile in the U.S.

GGC: Why has there been such an increase in the number of Brazilian bands coming to SXSW?

TM: Because my partner, Mark and I, we’re independent consultants at SXSW and public relations and we have been on two trade missions to Brazil in 2007 and 2008, specifically to see bands and meet independent labels and in 2008 Brent Grulke, creative director for SXSW also went with us on one of these trips. So a lot of these bands that you’re seeing are prior bands that either we actually saw when we were in Brazil or we met with their representative and it generated a lot of interest at SXSW.

GGC: Now was Gilbert Gil’s appearance at SXSW a few years ago any indicator that there would be more representation of Brazilian music? Was it in any way a turning point that made you all realize ‘hey this could be something that could take off. We have all of these Latin acts from different countries in Latin America and there’s not as much Brazilian music. Why don’t we go out and find them?’

TM: I’ve lived in Brazil since the 70s and I’ve known Gilberto Gil since that time. And I’ve been working with Brazilian acts touring nationally in the U.S. or releasing records. I certainly wanted to bring that into the excitement I think and the fantastic commercial opportunity at SXSW. I’ve been going to Austin for 23 years so I knew that there was an audience for Brazilian music. I mean they have amazing things there Lissette. They have the biggest Brazilian library archives in the world at the University of Texas library. They have an escola de samba made up of all gringos, you know capoeira school all gringos and when we gave Gil the key to the city in 2007 I mean they had this huge display of capoeira and samba and there was one actual Brazilian in the crowd. So it seemed like a great, very hospitable place to have particularly younger bands come in and get their feet wet in the American market. I would say the real turning point was the year before Gil came when we brought Lenine. And Mark and I and a partner actually financed that cause there was no way to bring him and we were working with him and we were just dying to have him and he played a showcase and it was just you know an incredible thing. He got a booking agent, he got IMN it’s his booking agency, right away, and got all this kind of attention and it was really, really good.

GGC: So you were also directly involved in bringing Gil in 2007?

TM: Yes, yes, because I was working on that record at the time, Gil Luminoso. You know I suggested it and he was coming, it was right when he was starting that tour. I brought it to his attention and I asked him if he would come.

GGC: Let’s talk about some of the bands you’ve listed, there’s too many to obviously name them all. Are there any there that you recognize that you could talk about, or that you’re familiar with?

TM: Well, first of all, I mean to me Patu Fu is just fabulous. They have a long career in Brazil already. They’re post-modern pop, they’re very cool, so definitely one of my picks. But what I wanted to say was that the diversity of music is what blows my mind. I would say a good half of these people sing in English, they deal in alternative rock that people could identify with any number of countries, it’s really not specifically Brazil, they sing less world music per se; people are doing a lot of interesting hybrids, a lot of punk rock in this line up. It’s very interesting.

GCC: During your two recent trade missions in 2007 and 2008, were you able to detect any trends? I know Brazil is such a huge country and to talk about it in monolithic terms is impossible, but are there any trends, specifically with the younger generation, of course the whole thing about the hybridity in music, there’s no such thing as purists in music any more, there is no such things as genres, but were there any trends that you were able to detect while you were there?

TM: Well I would say particularly traveling in the northeast the techno brega continues to be really big and there are a lot of sort of like garage gatherings late at night where people play it all night long.

GGC: And is that going to be reflected at all at SXSW?

TM: There’s no techno brega, there’s one brega, but it’s not techno and that would be La Pupuna, they’re from Belem.

GGC: It’s always been said that Brazilian music is so insular due to the sheer size of the country the market there can support its own vast industry. Has that changed in the last several years as we see more music being exported?

TM:You know I was just really very impressed by stories people told us, in fact from bands that aren’t being represented at SXSW. The people who are doing a great business via MySpace and they’re getting signed to U.S. and Canadian labels just on the basis of the music that they’re putting up on their MySpace. I think that, you know especially with Gil’s leadership on this, I think that Brazilian musicians are very far in thinking in terms of how to use the Internet as a method of communication and they sort of understand that they’re in a somewhat isolated spot, that this is their best tool to reach into the outside world and they’re really into that. I mean a number of these bands that are coming to SX, will be doing full tours of the United States that they booked fully through MySpace and Facebook. No agents, no nothing.

GGC: Yeah I guess that’s the nature of the music industry now, they’re cutting out the middleman.

TM: I will say, it’s quite impressive how music is still regionalized. I mean there are still local scenes, like I said the techno brega scene is happening in Belem, in the state of Pará. We were in Minas Gerais in the summer too, and there you see a very evolved style of music, I mean those people obviously have a really intense musical education, from classical background and it goes into making music that is instrumental in more of a western European tradition perhaps. I think if we mention the great Milton Nascimento, he too has kind of that Minas lineage because his music is so complex melodically and harmonically.

GGC: He was part of the Clube da Esquina scene.

TM: Yeah, yeah, then in Goiania they have a metal and hard rock scene. They’ll be some bands from Goiania.

GGC: Speaking of the Internet have you heard of this singer/songwriter who passed away very young, he killed himself, Yonlu? Luaka Bop is going to release an album.

TM: I did read about that.

GGC: It reflects the whole of idea of communicating through the Internet and making DIY music in your own bedroom…

TM: And getting it out to the world even if you’re in your bedroom, yeah I agree.

GGC: It’s fascinating.

TM: I mean the other thing too that I think is really interesting Lissette is that Brazilians, I mean I’ve been going to Brazil for over thirty years, the young Brazilian musicians are organizing, creating professional organizations for themselves at a rate that really astounds me. This one guy who’s coming with a couple of these bands, Eduardo Ramos, he’s the guy who was originally managing CSS, so you know he’s pretty smart about how to export music, but he also realized that they needed to have a better internal system because touring in Brazil is really difficult financially and organizationally and he set up a network just in the state of Sao Paulo that has 26 venues that bands can come and do around the state and he’s really working on that, not only for the Brazilian bands in Sao Paulo and other states, but also as an exchange with bands in the U.S. who want to come down and you know have a full itinerary in Brazil.

GGC: That’s amazing.

TM: So that’s happening too.

North Meets Northeast Meets Rio

Rio de Janeiro has traditionally moved to the rhythmic intensity of samba and the cool sway of bossa nova. But the city’s urban youth also has a strong predilection for homegrown hip-hop – a genre A Filial deftly melds with the city’s musical legacy on their U.S. debut, $1,99, out in December on NYC label Verge Records. When the five-member crew first banded together they recorded tracks using a PlayStation, a karaoke machine, a $10 mic, and a musical toy, all dubbed down on a secondhand cassette. On their latest ouput A Filial remained committed to their rudimentary roots. They laid down beats on hacked software in two of the members’ non-sound proof apartment overlooking Rio, surrounded by forests in the bohemian neighborhood of Santa Teresa. GGC corresponded via email with A Filial trumpeter and MC Ben Lamar, a former teacher who grew up in Chicago's southside listening to his father's Brazilian music collection. The story of his friendship with A Filial founder Edu Lopes transcends cultural, geographical and language barriers through a common love of music that's universal.

GGC: What does A Filial mean? What's the story behind the name?

BL: A Filial has its magical origins from the Portuguese word “filho” which means “son”. A Filial is the child of the relationship between music and the people who are involved in its creation. Its the awareness that the project is simply the result of the web of relationships that keep it alive and healthy with the love of a child.

GGC: You guys were skateboarders before you became musicians or before you decided to band together as such, right? How has that particular sub-culture influenced your sound and the band's perspective?

BL: The first members of the group met on the street while skating. In Brazil, skateboard is an important element of the Hip Hop culture. In the U.S. there are basically 3 elements of Hip Hop: Rapping, Breaking, and Graffiti. In Brazil there is a fourth element added and that’s Skating. The skateboard culture when viewed in its earliest and rawest form has a strong connection to the earliest and rawest forms music or any art form for that matter. It’s done on the streets, close to the people, and represents a sense of expressive rebellion.

GGC: What are some of your influences from American hip-hop, past and present and Brazil's rich musical landscape?

BL: Hard question. The list is infinite. Edu and I have had many hip hop listening sessions in our old apartment and on the playlist included artist like the Beastie Boys, Public Enemy, Run-Dmc, NWA, Krs One, Jungle Brothers, ATCQ, De La Soul,Wu Tang, Gang Starr, Mf Doom, Mc Lyte, just to name a few. Of course the Brazilian musical landscape is vast...We’ve been influenced by many from Cartola to Pixinguinha...Jobim to Baden Powell…Hermeto Pascoal to Luis Gonzaga..The groups of Tropicalismo, Jorge Ben, Chico Buarque..once again just to name a few.

GGC: In $1,99 you explore a lot of rhythms and styles from the Northeast - like maracatú, forro, frevo -- both in lyrical context and in the arrangements. Is there something about music from the Northeast that lends itself to be easily transplanted within the context of hip-hop music?

BL: Well I think the music and rhythms of the Northeast need to be heard more. Most people outside of Brazil are not really hip to the sounds and culture of that region. The Brazilian music that is mostly exported or accepted by the rest of the globe is the music and style that came out of the Bossa Nova movement, which is amazingly beautiful, but it’s just the tip of the iceberg of Brazilian music culture. I know many great Brazilian musicians, legends, masters who suffer from this. On this album we tried to be slick and pay homage to the different rhythms/styles rarely heard, especially in Hip-Hop. But we tried to do it our way with total respect of the ancestors. Everything that is beautiful lends itself for integration so the music of the Northeast, or from wherever, lends itself to the context of Hip-Hop.

GGC: I noticed that the first part of the album is very bass heavy and then it becomes more organic, with more of a focus on Brazilian roots music and I think there are even a few instrumental tracks. There's a lot of variety and different contours. Can you go into the structure of the album a little and what you guys had set out to accomplish?

BL:There was no pre-planned structure of the album. We try to keep the music as honest as possible.The main goal is to touch on every human emotion. Sometimes as swe need different vehicles to express different emotions. The vehicle can be bass heavy, electro, or acoustic. As along as we are able to express issues that are present in our lives at the moment then the music is honest.

GGC: You actually grew up in Chicago. What is your connection with Brazil and Brazilian music and how did you end up becoming a part of a Brazilian hip-hop crew?

BL: I’m from the Southside of Chicago. My connection with Brazil began with my father and his late night music listening sessions that he allowed me and my older brother to be apart of. His record collection included everything from Soul, Jazz, Musicals, Rock, John Williams’s movie soundtracks, whatever. But the thing that set him apart from the rest of the people he knew was his Brazilian collection. So I grew up listening to the music of Vinicius de Moraes and Tom Jobim. That sound introduced me, like many other people of the world, to Brazil. So I decided to move to Brazil on the fly without knowing anyone, without speaking Portuguese, nor having much money.. always. I just travel with my instrument and the memories of the listening sessions with my father. The hunger to learn more about that sound and culture gave me courage to do what I did. To make a long crazy adventure short, I felt that there was part of me in Brazil so I took the risk to actually meet this side of Ben Lamar. The other Ben Lamar changed my life but he owes me some money..always. As for A Filial.. I actually jammed with them at one of the early A Filial shows in 2003. Edu and I somehow found a way to communicate with my non existent Portuguese and his terrible English. We taught one another each other’s language just from him picking me up from my over-priced “gringo” rate Copacabana apartment and hanging out discussing music. Actually Edu and I became friends through our similar childhood love for the music Jobim. Edu would sing the lyrics and I would hum the melody.

GGC: Where do you live now?

BL: Good question. Once again to make a crazy adventure short…I’m back in Chicago at the moment, but still living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I’m split between two worlds…maybe three at the moment.

GGC: Edu Lopes has said that A Filial's first tape was made using a Playstation, a karaoke set, a $10 mic, a toy that made music, and a used cassette. What recording techniques does the band use these days? Anything innovative or a little off-kilter?

BL: Well in Brazil things can always become little off-kilter. The people there have the skill to make do with many things that other people would have no idea how to utilize. From this I learned a lot. I wouldn’t say for this recording that we used anything “innovative”. I think the innovativeness lived in our endurance. I guess this is common for most independent artist like ourselves. Of course, we used the normal “Cracked” computer software, terrible mics, non-sound proof room, bounced back from being robbed multiple times of instruments at gunpoint..but hey…that’s the life of an independent artist. The other “off-kilter” recording techniques are secret…OOHH!!!

GGC: How does A Filial stand out from other Brazilian hip-hop crews?

BL: First I’d like to say there is great underground Hip-Hop in Brazil. I feel A Filial does a good job at mixing the musical traditions of Brazil with the modern sounds of today without watering down the traditional richness of the music genres we include in our sound. We also bring the hardcore Carioca swing to Hip-Hop. There can be a lot of “dark/negative” Hip Hop in Brazil as well as in the rest of the world . Sure this is just a result of the environment, but every member of A Filial has first hand experience in dealing with these same hostile environments. We try to deal with this reality in different way…different sounds, colors, and light.

GGC: What's the hip-hop scene like in Rio and how is it different from Sao Paulo?

BL: The Sao Paulo music scene is a more open-minded than Rio. It also has more venues for experimental bands in all genres of music. There’s more work in S.P. of course because it’s bigger and it’s the financial center of Brazil. Rio can be closed-minded at times for musicians who desire to do something other than traditional samba. But Rio has a flavor, culture and intimacy that Sao Paulo can never have. The music traditions that live in Rio give the scene a different type of edge and different type of swing.

What's the concept behind $1,99?

BL: $1,99 refers to the $1,99 stores in Brazil which are the equivalent to the 99-cent stores in the U.S. These stores are filled with a variety of affordable items for everybody. It’s a price for the every day folk. A millionaire can shop there alongside a person who only has $1,99 to their name. The title kind of represents accessibility. But in the end it's just good music.

GGC: Tell me about Rio's Santa Teresa neighborhood, where many of the band members live if I'm not mistaken. How has it influenced the concept and sound behind $1,99?

BL: Santa Teresa is a mountain top neighborhood near the center of Rio. It has a strong bohemian vibe . Art is very alive there. Unlike in some U.S. and European trendy neighborhoods where it looks cool and artsy but the price to live is ridiculous. A Parisian friend of mine calls these neighborhoods “Bo-Bour” ( pronounced “Bo-Bo”) which means :Bohemian/Bourgeois. Santa Teresa is very authentic. You can have a mansion next to a favela but everyone uses the same bakery and same bar. I think the violence or reality that surrounds it will keep it from turning into a complete “Bo-Bour” hood…hopefully. Three of the members lived in Santa Teresa during the recording of $1,99. The rest in live in Zona Norte (northside) of Rio. This is a place where most tourist never get see. I love it up there. It has some of the warmest people in Zona Norte and some of the best musicians live there. But of course in Zona Norte lives a lot of reality.. a lot. The type of reality that makes the inner-city problems of the States look like child’s play. Santa Teresa is almost a natural barrier between The south and north zone of Rio. The south zone has its famed richer neighborhoods like Ipanema , Leblon, and so on. In Santa you are in the middle of two different worlds. Edu and I had an apartment in Equitativa, which is an old apartment complex higher in the forest of Santa Teresa right next to the favela Morro dos Prazeres, which has great Baile Funk parties by the way. We have some of the best views of the city as well. We recorded the album in our apartment along with the sounds of the complex and the forest..monkeys, tucans,cicadas, & etc. So of course, the neighborhood of Santa along with other neighborhoods of Rio has influenced the sound of the album. In the beginning of the instrumental song “Maluisa” ( which is the first song Edu & I composed together..5years ago) you can hear sounds of insects and birds. Those are the sounds we heard everyday. If you just put a mic outside the window you can capture “REAL MUSIC”…the music of nature.

GGC: Does A Filial believe that music has a role in shaping social consciousness and promoting global awareness of important issues?

BL: Yes..without a doubt. I remember watching a documentary about the great Panamanian singer Ruben Blades and him mentioning the reason why he went into music and acting. There is a great illiteracy rate growing in the world today..Latin America…Africa and with my experience teaching in the U.S. its presence is strong there as well. Some people can’t read about the issues of today. An artist of the people should always create something to move the people. Now in which direction? I don’t know…depends on the artist. Music has always been a communication tool. It can be used for awareness, education, or whatever. One thing I did learn is that you can’t be preaching when sharing info. That will turn a lot of heads away. I got dissed by a lot of 4th and 3rd graders in my short time teaching. The 7th & 8th graders loved me though. I think the same applies to everyone. So our music isn’t preachy but we have our slick way of promoting global awareness for sure.

GGC: How did Verge Records get involved with A Filial?

BL: I’m not sure of the exact details of the story. I know Emmanuel Zunz of Verge got in contact with Edu Lopes of A Filial through an artist friend of ours by then name of Felipe Motta.

GGC: Can you describe what unique ingredient each member brings to the band, including yourself?

BL: Edu Lopes is a great writer/lyricist. He has a unique way of playing with the Portuguese language. He is also the leader, the guy hustling to keep the project and sound of A Filial alive. He brings his knowledge of the Rio underground music/skate scene. He was also an integral part of the Hemp Family ( Marcelo D2, Bnegao,etc). Flavio 52 is the grandson of a Brazilian renaissance man and samba legend, Heitor dos Prazeres. Spending time with his family is the greatest lesson of soul, samba, and art I’ve ever received. He brings the raw samba tradition into the mix. DJ Castro is a very musical DJ, which is very hard to find. His endless will to learn brings a fresh energy to the table. He is also a big dub DJ in Brazil performing with talented artist such as Black Alien & Bnegao. Rodrigo Pacatu is very important because he brings the rich tradition of Brazilian rhythm to the mix and knows how to translate it in a modern context. His experience of playing percussion ranges from Samba, Forro, MPB, and Cuban music to Baile Funk. And last but not least the Southside boy. Well it's hard to say what I bring exactly without feeling weird. I bring another flavor of Las Americas via Alabama and the Southside of Chicago. I hope my first hand experience in searching for different sounds in various genres of music without compromise helps the sound of A Filial or any other project that I’m involved in.

Cutting-Edge Brazilian Producer Beto Villares Chats With GGC

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].

Gui Amabis Talks to Global Groove Connection About Sonantes... And A Few Other Things

On the phone from Recife, Brazil, soundtrack producer Gui Amabis talked to GGC about Sonantes, the São Paulo based collective that he is a part of, along with Grammy nominated singer Céu, Pupillo and Dengue from mangue beat punk outfit Nação Zumbi, and Rica Amabis, a member of hip-hop collective Instituto. Sonantes’s debut album was recently released on Six Degrees and it also features some collabos with Siba, Lucio Maia, Beto Villares, and Apollo 9. Gui talked about his fascination with music from the past, São Paulo’s creative openness, and making good music with close friends.

GGC: The idea for Sonantes began with 3 Na Massa how did things evolve and lead to another collaboration between you, Rica Amabis, Céu, Pupillo, and Dengue?

Gui A: It was Céu’s idea. She wanted to do something different from her personal work,

this was while we were finishing 3 Na Massa, 3 Na Massa wasn’t finished yet. It was like in the end of the process of 3 Na Massa and then I had some songs that I was composing, everybody heard it and liked it and we started like OK, so like we have some songs, so let’s make new ones and try to get a number of songs that we can release on an album. But it was Céu’s idea.

GGC: I’ve spoken to Rica a little bit about this, I’m very interested in what’s going on in São Paulo, in that it seems like there’s a group or a scene of musicians who like to experiment with traditional folk music from Brazil and hip-hop, and electronica, and it just seems like a very eclectic scene.

Gui A: You know what I feel is happening in São Paulo is like what happened in the 60s or 50s around the world when musicians had time to spend with each other, you know, and talk, and drink, and stay together, not even making music, just talking and hearing stuff and hearing what everyone thinks about things and I think that was lost for some time, because of the times, no one has time, everyone has to run, you know, to get to pay the rent, so I think it’s happening again, everyone is like having more time. And I think it’s also because of the crises going on in the world. We don’t have much work [LAUGHING]. We have work but we have more time, you know. I go to Rica’s house and stay there for like the whole day and then Pupillo shows up and Dengue shows up and then we go to Catatau’s place and talk, you know. So it’s like, I don’t know if it’s a scene you know. There’s a lot of different circle of friends, you know.

GGC: So there’s a strong spirit of collaboration.

Gui A: Yeah, yeah, I think people are starting… I don’t know, I sometimes think about that, I think somewhere in the 80s, I don’t know it’s my opinion OK, it’s my opinion…

GGC: Yeah of course…

Gui A: Somewhere in the 80s everyone was like this my style, I want to do my song, you know, and now everyone one is more like let’s do something and it’s more productive because I can start something with Rica and then come here to Recife and do something with Siba…

GGC: But it does seem like a lot of the best music coming out of Brazil right now is concentrated in Sao Paulo. Is that just coincidence?

Gui A: It’s because Sao Paulo is the economic capital and it’s happening in São Paulo but it comes from all of Brazil. Dengue and Pupillo are from here, Recife, Catatau from Cidadao Instigado is from Fortaleza, which is here in the Northeast also. So, it’s happening in Sao Paulo but it comes from the whole country and it gathers there. You know what’s happening I think is, it’s mixing more, you know, because people are going to live there and mixing more things there I think.

GGC: So correct me if I’m wrong, but I kind of compare it to what was going on in Rio in the late 50s and 60s when some of the best interpreters of bossa nova were coming from Bahia but they were all coalescing in Rio. I think it’s interesting that there’s been a shift, because Rio has traditionally been the epicenter for all the great music of Brazil but it seems like now it’s São Paulo and it kind of reflects that fact that we live in a post-modern world and I think São Paulo epitomizes that.

Gui A: And I also, I think, in terms of the collective, I think we’re living in a crises and everyone has more time, you know, and everyone is more bothered in the city and I think that putting all of that together, the time we have, the more bothered we are with the city, with the noise, and the more references we have from everyone from the entire country, I think that culminates in what’s happening here.

GGC: And in Sonantes, I’ve listened to the album a lot and I’ve noticed that there’s a

confluence, if you will, between this futuristic sound, but also kind of looking to the past and bringing elements of tradition into… you know it’s like a fusion of different times and different styles.

Gui A: I think we like old music. I think it’s the Portuguese side of everyone. I think it’s a very Portuguese album in my opinion, from the Portugal roots.

GGC: You mean from fado and that kind of thing?

Gui A: Yeah, it’s not so directed to the rhythm, you know, it’s more to the feeling, it’s a

little bit sad and narrow, it’s not the rhythm, it’s the vibe. We listen to old stuff, you know.

GGC: What were you listening to, what were your influences when you were making this

album?

Gui A: Oh, I listen to very old things [LAUGING].

GGC: Like?

Gui A: Very old things. Some big bands from Europe from the 30s, Clara Nunes, her first

albums, when she wasn’t doing samba; her first albums she does a lot of traditional songs, Brazilian romantic and traditional songs, not samba, and I listen a lot to Siba. Me and Rica, and Dengue, and Céu, we are from Brazil but we grew up in a world in which radio played music from everywhere, so it’s not like ‘Oh I play Brazilian music,’ no I listen to since I was 13, I listen to Bob Marley and then to Fela Kuti and just listened to him and then Joao Gilberto, so I, I’m Brazilian, I have my Brazilian roots but I had everything, you know.

GGC: You were speaking of Siba and he’s actually on the album, he sings “Toque de Coito,”

how was it that you all decided to invite him to participate?

Gui A: I was working on that track in my studio and the other room, I used to have a room in Catatau’s studio, Catatau from Cidadao Instigado, he has a studio with Caliu – Caliu is a percussionist and a sound engineer from Fortaleza also but he lives in São Paulo – and I rented a room there in their studio and I was working on that track, I was working on the instrumentals and Siba showed up to record with Catatau and he went in the room and he heard the music and he asked ‘What is that?’ and I said ‘Oh this is Sonantes we’re doing an album, I’m working on this track,” and I said ‘We’re looking for someone…,’ I was, I wanted to invite him, you know, but I was like ‘We’re looking for someone to sing this one thing,’ at the moment he said ‘I’ll sing that.’ I said ‘Oh, I don’t believe you can sing it,’ [LAUGHS]. It was occasional, he showed up, I was working on the track and he liked it, and now I’m doing a soundtrack for a play with him. Now he invited me [LAUGHS].”

GGC: There’s a cinematic quality to the Sonantes album, how has you experience in producing soundtracks influenced you?

Gui A: My brother [Rica] works with movies too, Puppilo works with movies too. I do more

soundtracks; that’s what I do more, I’ve been doing that most of my time. Doing TV series, doing movies... Going back to the conversation, you mentioned there was a shift from Rio to São Paulo and I think what happened in the 60s where people gathered to make music and thought more like in terms of a collective and not as ‘Oh I’m gonna do my work, my career, my thing, and my name,’ I think the record companies maybe did that in the 80s. And it’s happening again, there’s no more, for us, there are no more record companies, we work for ourselves, we take care of ourselves. So I think that for that reason [that era] is coming back, people are starting to… there’s no plan as a career you know.

GGC: I think that lends itself to more creativity, when you’re not being dictated.

Gui A: Sure, we did this [album] because we love each other’s work. Everyone, I love what

Pupillo does, and what Dengue does, and what Céu does. We all admire each other and Céu admires Rica a lot. We did this in a home studio, only the end of the album, when we recorded the drums, was when we went to the studio, but the creative process was done at home. It’s very loose and I think the album reflects that.

GGC: I really like the track “Quilombo Te Espera.” Zumbi comes up a lot in popular myth in

Brazil and there are a lot of songs about him and the quilombos, and how he’s tied to capoeira too, and I love how you all take this legend of mythical proportions and you transform it into something new in the song, it has a very futuristic sound, but at the same time there’s a primordial, jungle futuristic thing going on. It’s a really good song.

Gui A: We look a lot to the old stuff, you know. We like everything that is going on also, but we guide ourselves to listen and I especially listen to old music, I try to remember where we came from and where we are.

GGC: There’s a balance between songs that bring in those elements from the past and other songs like “Defenestrando” which is more experimental. Can you talk a little bit about the instruments used in the album?

Gui A: We used a Hammond in a lot of the songs that Pepe Cisneros played. Pepe is Cuban,

he’s a percussionist, pianist, he plays everything; he’s a multi-instrumentalist [whose credits include Brazilian chanteuse Cibelle, Céu, Sizão Machado]. Pepe is a great friend of mine, we would hang out together everyday before I started working in the studio in recording and production, when I was just hanging out, having fun [LAUGHS]. And he’s a very good friend and partner and he plays the Hammond on a lot of the tracks, which I think is what repeats itself more. We used some synthesizers, and the cork, and some of that stuff. And a lot of pieces from samples from everywhere that we deconstruct and make it sound totally different, not using it in the traditional way like when hip-hop first started and they would just put the loop there and played a beat. We try to cut it.

GGC: Going back to Cuban music, and this has nothing to do with Sonantes but have you

heard of a bass player named Yusa? She just did an album produced by a Brazilian producer named Ale Siquiera.

Gui A: Oh, I’ve heard of her.

GGC: I’ve always found it interesting how there are so many parallels between Cuban and Brazilian culture.

Gui A: I think that Cuba is the most similar place to Brazil.

GGC: I think it’s mostly because of the same African heritage.

Gui A: And the mix, because in the rest of Latin America there wasn’t such great a mix of

Africa, and Europe, you don’t see many black people in Argentina, in Bolivia, in Peru. You’re either native or European.

GGC: Well listen thanks so much for taking some time out to chat.

Gui A: I helped you?

GGC: Yes, definitely.

Gui A: But just for you to know, Sonantes is like a… existe um carinho, sabe. We did it because we had these songs and we thought it would be a good album and that we could have fun doing it, and Céu especially was the one who was like let’s do it, let’s do it. And I think everything came out very good and the artwork I think is beautiful from Valentina Trajano and Jorge Du Peixe – Jorge Du Peixe is the lead singer and he writes all the lyrics for Naçao Zumbi – and I think it reflects what the album is.

GGC: The chemistry is palpable.

Gui A: I hope, I hope… I don’t hope anything, but I would be happy if especially North Americans could understand because it’s very Brazilian, some songs only a Brazilian can hear or only someone who really understands Portuguese is going to hear the lyrics and understand and remember their parents, it’s a very Brazilian album.

GGC: It’s nostalgic…

Gui A: That’s from the Portuguese side.

GGC: Tem uma qualidade ancestral, uma coisa assim.

Gui A: It’s from the past, from when there weren’t any records anywhere, and just the radio playing.

GGC: I think it’s an album to listen to sitting around the house, with a group of friends…

Gui A: Yeah, and then someone would stop to sing the lyrics, it’s very Brazilian.

Gui Amabis Talks to Global Groove Connection About Sonantes... And A Few Other Things

On the phone from Recife, Brazil, soundtrack producer Gui Amabis talked to GGC about Sonantes, the São Paulo based collective that he is a part of, along with Grammy nominated singer Céu, Pupillo and Dengue from mangue beat punk outfit Nação Zumbi, and Rica Amabis, a member of hip-hop collective Instituto. Sonantes’s debut album was recently released on Six Degrees and it also features some collabos with Siba, Lucio Maia, Beto Villares, and Apollo 9. Gui talked about his fascination with music from the past, São Paulo’s creative openness, and making good music with close friends.

GGC: The idea for Sonantes began with 3 Na Massa how did things evolve and lead to another collaboration between you, Rica Amabis, Céu, Pupillo, and Dengue?

Gui A: It was Céu’s idea. She wanted to do something different from her personal work,

this was while we were finishing 3 Na Massa, 3 Na Massa wasn’t finished yet. It was like in the end of the process of 3 Na Massa and then I had some songs that I was composing, everybody heard it and liked it and we started like OK, so like we have some songs, so let’s make new ones and try to get a number of songs that we can release on an album. But it was Céu’s idea.

GGC: I’ve spoken to Rica a little bit about this, I’m very interested in what’s going on in São Paulo, in that it seems like there’s a group or a scene of musicians who like to experiment with traditional folk music from Brazil and hip-hop, and electronica, and it just seems like a very eclectic scene.

Gui A: You know what I feel is happening in São Paulo is like what happened in the 60s or 50s around the world when musicians had time to spend with each other, you know, and talk, and drink, and stay together, not even making music, just talking and hearing stuff and hearing what everyone thinks about things and I think that was lost for some time, because of the times, no one has time, everyone has to run, you know, to get to pay the rent, so I think it’s happening again, everyone is like having more time. And I think it’s also because of the crises going on in the world. We don’t have much work [LAUGHING]. We have work but we have more time, you know. I go to Rica’s house and stay there for like the whole day and then Pupillo shows up and Dengue shows up and then we go to Catatau’s place and talk, you know. So it’s like, I don’t know if it’s a scene you know. There’s a lot of different circle of friends, you know.

GGC: So there’s a strong spirit of collaboration.

Gui A: Yeah, yeah, I think people are starting… I don’t know, I sometimes think about that, I think somewhere in the 80s, I don’t know it’s my opinion OK, it’s my opinion…

GGC: Yeah of course…

Gui A: Somewhere in the 80s everyone was like this my style, I want to do my song, you know, and now everyone one is more like let’s do something and it’s more productive because I can start something with Rica and then come here to Recife and do something with Siba…

GGC: But it does seem like a lot of the best music coming out of Brazil right now is concentrated in Sao Paulo. Is that just coincidence?

Gui A: It’s because Sao Paulo is the economic capital and it’s happening in São Paulo but it comes from all of Brazil. Dengue and Pupillo are from here, Recife, Catatau from Cidadao Instigado is from Fortaleza, which is here in the Northeast also. So, it’s happening in Sao Paulo but it comes from the whole country and it gathers there. You know what’s happening I think is, it’s mixing more, you know, because people are going to live there and mixing more things there I think.

GGC: So correct me if I’m wrong, but I kind of compare it to what was going on in Rio in the late 50s and 60s when some of the best interpreters of bossa nova were coming from Bahia but they were all coalescing in Rio. I think it’s interesting that there’s been a shift, because Rio has traditionally been the epicenter for all the great music of Brazil but it seems like now it’s São Paulo and it kind of reflects that fact that we live in a post-modern world and I think São Paulo epitomizes that.

Gui A: And I also, I think, in terms of the collective, I think we’re living in a crises and everyone has more time, you know, and everyone is more bothered in the city and I think that putting all of that together, the time we have, the more bothered we are with the city, with the noise, and the more references we have from everyone from the entire country, I think that culminates in what’s happening here.

GGC: And in Sonantes, I’ve listened to the album a lot and I’ve noticed that there’s a

confluence, if you will, between this futuristic sound, but also kind of looking to the past and bringing elements of tradition into… you know it’s like a fusion of different times and different styles.

Gui A: I think we like old music. I think it’s the Portuguese side of everyone. I think it’s a very Portuguese album in my opinion, from the Portugal roots.

GGC: You mean from fado and that kind of thing?

Gui A: Yeah, it’s not so directed to the rhythm, you know, it’s more to the feeling, it’s a

little bit sad and narrow, it’s not the rhythm, it’s the vibe. We listen to old stuff, you know.

GGC: What were you listening to, what were your influences when you were making this

album?

Gui A: Oh, I listen to very old things [LAUGING].

GGC: Like?

Gui A: Very old things. Some big bands from Europe from the 30s, Clara Nunes, her first

albums, when she wasn’t doing samba; her first albums she does a lot of traditional songs, Brazilian romantic and traditional songs, not samba, and I listen a lot to Siba. Me and Rica, and Dengue, and Céu, we are from Brazil but we grew up in a world in which radio played music from everywhere, so it’s not like ‘Oh I play Brazilian music,’ no I listen to since I was 13, I listen to Bob Marley and then to Fela Kuti and just listened to him and then Joao Gilberto, so I, I’m Brazilian, I have my Brazilian roots but I had everything, you know.

GGC: You were speaking of Siba and he’s actually on the album, he sings “Toque de Coito,”

how was it that you all decided to invite him to participate?

Gui A: I was working on that track in my studio and the other room, I used to have a room in Catatau’s studio, Catatau from Cidadao Instigado, he has a studio with Caliu – Caliu is a percussionist and a sound engineer from Fortaleza also but he lives in São Paulo – and I rented a room there in their studio and I was working on that track, I was working on the instrumentals and Siba showed up to record with Catatau and he went in the room and he heard the music and he asked ‘What is that?’ and I said ‘Oh this is Sonantes we’re doing an album, I’m working on this track,” and I said ‘We’re looking for someone…,’ I was, I wanted to invite him, you know, but I was like ‘We’re looking for someone to sing this one thing,’ at the moment he said ‘I’ll sing that.’ I said ‘Oh, I don’t believe you can sing it,’ [LAUGHS]. It was occasional, he showed up, I was working on the track and he liked it, and now I’m doing a soundtrack for a play with him. Now he invited me [LAUGHS].”

GGC: There’s a cinematic quality to the Sonantes album, how has you experience in producing soundtracks influenced you?

Gui A: My brother [Rica] works with movies too, Puppilo works with movies too. I do more

soundtracks; that’s what I do more, I’ve been doing that most of my time. Doing TV series, doing movies... Going back to the conversation, you mentioned there was a shift from Rio to São Paulo and I think what happened in the 60s where people gathered to make music and thought more like in terms of a collective and not as ‘Oh I’m gonna do my work, my career, my thing, and my name,’ I think the record companies maybe did that in the 80s. And it’s happening again, there’s no more, for us, there are no more record companies, we work for ourselves, we take care of ourselves. So I think that for that reason [that era] is coming back, people are starting to… there’s no plan as a career you know.

GGC: I think that lends itself to more creativity, when you’re not being dictated.

Gui A: Sure, we did this [album] because we love each other’s work. Everyone, I love what

Pupillo does, and what Dengue does, and what Céu does. We all admire each other and Céu admires Rica a lot. We did this in a home studio, only the end of the album, when we recorded the drums, was when we went to the studio, but the creative process was done at home. It’s very loose and I think the album reflects that.

GGC: I really like the track “Quilombo Te Espera.” Zumbi comes up a lot in popular myth in

Brazil and there are a lot of songs about him and the quilombos, and how he’s tied to capoeira too, and I love how you all take this legend of mythical proportions and you transform it into something new in the song, it has a very futuristic sound, but at the same time there’s a primordial, jungle futuristic thing going on. It’s a really good song.

Gui A: We look a lot to the old stuff, you know. We like everything that is going on also, but we guide ourselves to listen and I especially listen to old music, I try to remember where we came from and where we are.

GGC: There’s a balance between songs that bring in those elements from the past and other songs like “Defenestrando” which is more experimental. Can you talk a little bit about the instruments used in the album?

Gui A: We used a Hammond in a lot of the songs that Pepe Cisneros played. Pepe is Cuban,

he’s a percussionist, pianist, he plays everything; he’s a multi-instrumentalist [whose credits include Brazilian chanteuse Cibelle, Céu, Sizão Machado]. Pepe is a great friend of mine, we would hang out together everyday before I started working in the studio in recording and production, when I was just hanging out, having fun [LAUGHS]. And he’s a very good friend and partner and he plays the Hammond on a lot of the tracks, which I think is what repeats itself more. We used some synthesizers, and the cork, and some of that stuff. And a lot of pieces from samples from everywhere that we deconstruct and make it sound totally different, not using it in the traditional way like when hip-hop first started and they would just put the loop there and played a beat. We try to cut it.

GGC: Going back to Cuban music, and this has nothing to do with Sonantes but have you

heard of a bass player named Yusa? She just did an album produced by a Brazilian producer named Ale Siquiera.

Gui A: Oh, I’ve heard of her.

GGC: I’ve always found it interesting how there are so many parallels between Cuban and Brazilian culture.

Gui A: I think that Cuba is the most similar place to Brazil.

GGC: I think it’s mostly because of the same African heritage.

Gui A: And the mix, because in the rest of Latin America there wasn’t such great a mix of

Africa, and Europe, you don’t see many black people in Argentina, in Bolivia, in Peru. You’re either native or European.

GGC: Well listen thanks so much for taking some time out to chat.

Gui A: I helped you?

GGC: Yes, definitely.

Gui A: But just for you to know, Sonantes is like a… existe um carinho, sabe. We did it because we had these songs and we thought it would be a good album and that we could have fun doing it, and Céu especially was the one who was like let’s do it, let’s do it. And I think everything came out very good and the artwork I think is beautiful from Valentina Trajano and Jorge Du Peixe – Jorge Du Peixe is the lead singer and he writes all the lyrics for Naçao Zumbi – and I think it reflects what the album is.

GGC: The chemistry is palpable.

Gui A: I hope, I hope… I don’t hope anything, but I would be happy if especially North Americans could understand because it’s very Brazilian, some songs only a Brazilian can hear or only someone who really understands Portuguese is going to hear the lyrics and understand and remember their parents, it’s a very Brazilian album.

GGC: It’s nostalgic…

Gui A: That’s from the Portuguese side.

GGC: Tem uma qualidade ancestral, uma coisa assim.

Gui A: It’s from the past, from when there weren’t any records anywhere, and just the radio playing.

GGC: I think it’s an album to listen to sitting around the house, with a group of friends…

Gui A: Yeah, and then someone would stop to sing the lyrics, it’s very Brazilian.