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Michal Shapiro

Every week Michal Shapiro reports on concerts, festivals and interviews with musicians, both international and local. Check out World Music for the latest on the video blog!

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Renata Rosa at the Forde Festival
Unlike the urban MPB or Bossa Nova we generally associate with Brazil, music from that country's northeast, and particularly Pernambuco, has a rugged, rural heart.
 
Although she is originally from Sao Paulo, Renata Rosa seems to have been created especially for this kind of soul. There is a direct, joyful quality to her presentation, as if she is simply delighted to be singing for you, and she and her ensemble have an endless energy for performance. (I imagine they do get tired like most humans, but I didn't see any of that. Even when their flight was cancelled and then re-scheduled for the following day and they had to return to the festival, they passed the time jamming and performing.)

 

 

The complete band is not a trio, and on opening night, Ana Araujo on vocals and percussion, and Hugo Lins on bass rounded out the ensemble on the big stage. But I was unable to get a satisfactory shoot from the performance that night, so I was glad to catch her gig at the tiny Pikant Café, perched above the town's river.

 

That is the beauty of the Forde festival, you can hear music in venues large and small all over the town and its environs, from concert halls, to classrooms and churches, even to mountain tops! This means that if you miss one show, you will likely be able to see the artist perform again. Indeed, Ms. Rosa said that of the many performances she gave, she thought the show at the Pikant was particularly strong, perhaps due to the proximity of the audience.

 

The place was jammed, both inside and on the outside deck, but I was able to score a chair in the corner and stand on it. (Sorry about that backlight, what can ya do.) Pepe da Silva here plays a 10 stringed guitar, Lucas dos Pazeres plays percussion. Everyone sings; indeed for me, it was the part singing that really drew me in, and I have to say the musicianship was mighty high all around.

 

Despite its traditional sound, the first song -- Corta o Pau -- is an original by Ms. Rosa. She wrote of it to me: "Its rhythm is called Coco de Roda. This composition has different influences such as indigenous vocal polyphonies, rabeca (traditional fiddle) played in the cavalo-marinho tradition (a kind of street performance) and the Viola (10 stringed guitar) played in the northeastern tradition.

 

The second Song -- Piau -- is her adaptation of a folk song. She writes, "It's rhythm is from our Afrobrazilian ritual called macumba."

 

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A Choro Trio in Manhattan

Douglas Lora and Dudu Maia (who I have covered previously) were in town, this time at the Caffe Vivaldi and with Douglas' brother Alexandre playing tambourine. The room was packed, so I only got this one good take out of it. But it's a sweet one!

 


Choro is a kind of urban folk music that grew out of a merging of European and Brazilian sensibilities, and it calls on the player to be agile, inventive and swinging. The emphasis on improvisation makes people compare it to jazz, but if one is going to do that, let's specify that it's a lot more Django than Miles. It's accessible music in every way.

 

Lora is a classically trained and plays a seven string guitar, and Maia also plays an altered instrument, a mandolin (called bandolim, in Brazil) with 10 strings, as opposed to the usual 8. Both are well respected musicians back home, and part of their tours generally consist of choro workshops. They are also part of a full-out band called Caraivana, so look out for that aggregate as well.

 

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New voices of MPB (Música Popular Brasileira)

At a choro concert I attended on New York's Lower East Side, I was clued in to an upcoming show with guitarist Douglas Lora backing up singer Verônica Ferriani. Lora gave me glowing reports about this young woman who is part of a new generation of great singers in the tradition of Música Popular Brasileira, or MPB. Based on the quality of Mr. Lora's last choro performance, I went to check it out.Ms. Ferriani is a petite woman, but listening to her sing is a very large experience. Her voice is warm, precise and powerful, and she has an impeccable interpretive style. She is on the rise in Brazil -- so remember, you saw her here first!

 

 

The evening's repertoire drew from mostly well known sources, Gilberto Gil, Chico Buarque, Luis Gonzaga, Tom Jobim, and Milton Nascimento, to name a few. And Ms. Ferriani even ventured into American jazz standard territory. But sticking to the Brazilian side of the program, I've chosen two songs: "Canção do Sal," a soulful work song by Milton Nascimento that I was not familiar with, and the grand chestnut "Manha de Carnaval" also known as the Theme from Black Orpheus. Ms. Ferriani takes on this song that has been sung by just about everyone (No less an icon than Dinah Shore evidently did a cover in Portuguese!) and gives it an authentic and personal reading.

 

I was also fortunate to get an audio track off the board from the Living Room, as they were taping the show for "The Loft" series on Sirius Satellite radio, so the sound is nice and clean. And if you want to hear the whole show, mark your calendars, 'cause it's airing Sunday June 5th at 7pm EST, on Sirius XM channel 30, "From the Living Room to the Loft" with encore presentations on following Tuesdays at 12noon, for two weeks.

 

Contact for Verônica Ferriani: eric@mtalifetime.com
To see an exclusive performance by Doug and Veronica, go to: goo.gl/xN6id

 
 

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The Continuing Adventures of Nation Beat

Keeping a band together in NYC is TOUGH.  I know because I've done it -- or tried to do it -- myself. So I have to hand it to Scott Kettner for sheer tenacity, regarding his pet project "Nation Beat." You may remember Scott as one of my very first interviews for this blog, about his Forro Brass Band. He made me promise back then to blog something about Nation Beat, so I started collecting and shooting footage, and letting the story develop.

 

 

 

Scott does raise an interesting issue, regarding "world music." In the fledgling days of the term, it was assumed that Cajun, Zydeco, Tex-Mex, Bluegrass, etc. were all part of world music. (Just check out the landmark "Rough Guide to World Music" published in 1994.) Since then, the term has expanded to include all kinds of hybrids. So in my opinion it's a kind of daft political correctness to exclude the Country Music influences in the Nation Beat repertoire...after all they aren't getting up there and doing an all-Country set; it's American Country filtered through Brazilian Country.  And anyway, our Country Music derives from our Scots-Irish heritage, does it not?  Or does that not qualify as world music to some folks any more? 

 
 

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