Word: raro
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...sometimes a good rhetorical tool. Although a more offensive show could be conceived (e.g. “Survivor: Gaza Strip”), “Survivor: Cook Islands” is pretty terrible. Contestants are divided up into four tribes based on race. The Aitu tribe includes Hispanics, Raro is made up of Caucasians, African-Americans are in Hiki, and Asians are in Puka. Calling the show a “social experiment like never before,” Jeff Probst explained to viewers that this year’s program was divided in this way in order to improve...
...this tradition, De Castro brings a sound that fluidly, intelligently and winningly blends disparate genres--samba, bossa nova, drum 'n' bass, hip-hop and soul--into futuristic music that echoes the past. On his debut album, Samba Raro (released last year on the Trama label), De Castro's lyrics, all in Portuguese, have an engaging, understated simplicity. The title song compares the movement of a beautiful woman to a samba (Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes made a similar comparison on their bossa-nova standard The Girl from Ipanema). Another song, Pra Voce Lembrar, tells the story...
Another key to Samba Raro's charm is that some of De Castro's songs mix in bits of Brazilian classics. For example, the gritty Afrosamba incorporates elements of Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell's 1966 song Canto de Ossanha. "The techno admirer likes Samba Raro because of the beats," says De Castro. "The soul fan loves my songs because of my soulful guitar, and the traditional Brazilian popular-music admirer catches the influences from Jorge Ben and Wilson Simonal that I put in." Yet De Castro doesn't use the past as a crutch. His originals, such as the elegiac...
...performer lives modestly. He shares a three-bedroom apartment in Sao Paulo with his mother, his sister, his collection of 4,000 vinyl LPs and his three favorite guitars (a Gibson B.B. King Little Lucille model, a Les Paul and a Fender Telecaster). De Castro isn't rich. Samba Raro sold about 30,000 copies, and last year De Castro pulled in about $70,000. Not bad but also no more than, according to a New York City tabloid report, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs spent on champagne one night this summer...
...Castro has a goal in mind. "Most Brazilian musicians are labeled international artists," he says. "I will be very glad when I enter an American record store and find Samba Raro not in the world-music section but beside people I admire like Prince and Stevie Wonder...