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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 Taste of the Førde Festival, The Musicians of the Nile

This is just the first of what I plan to be several postings about the fabulous Førde Festival in Norway. The festival has already garnered itself an excellent reputation amongst world music aficionados, but should be on the agenda of anyone who enjoys travel and adventurous music. Part of that is due to the spectacular setting, and I advise those who make the trip to plan to explore the fjords all around the area. As press, we were treated to a breathtaking journey from Bergen via rail and boat up to Førde, that I will not soon forget. The other part of the allure is the excellent and canny musical choices of the producers. Torill Falleide and Hilde Bjørkum know what will please their audience, and it's an engaging mix of both unadorned ethnic and eclectic music that is consistently entertaining.

 

My video is from the opening night, and it’s quite literally a dazzler. The various musicians were asked to present their most tantalizing numbers, as the first program of the festival is intended as a menu, giving the audience a sampling of what is to come.

 

 

So the Musicians of the Nile presented a tanoura dance, complete with light show. What made it so amazing was that the light show was inside the costume of the dancer! Some folks questioned the "authenticity" of this but I think that if tiny lights had been around that could be sewn into the costume of the dancer back when it was first being performed hundreds of years ago, it would have been perfectly within cultural standards!

 

The tanoura dance will remind you of the whirling dervish dances of Turkey and they are indeed related, as the sufi tradition is present in Egypt through the Levant and Turkey, and in some forms, even into west Africa. (There are some claims that Sufism actually originates in ancient Egypt, but the majority of sources I have read posit that it was a reaction to, and outgrowth of, Islam.) The music and the whirling is meant to induce a trance, which in turn leads to a union with the divine. The skirts of the dancer are layered, and each color on the skirt represents a different Sufi order. These days this kind of presentation is very popular for entertainment at weddings and other kinds of celebrations. For my part, I was in heaven in a different way -- I'm a fool for colored lights (you should see me at a fireworks display) and I felt like a little kid transported with delight.

 

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