Word: samba
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Castro's new album Samba Raro ranks as one of the finest solo debuts in South or North America in recent memory. De Castro, 28, makes beat-blending music. Drawing from bossa nova, soul, drum 'n' bass and other styles, he sways softly like Tom Jobim and breaks off street beats that would do Dr. Dre proud...
...vocalists to watch are Marisa Monte, 33 (Memories, Chronicles and Declarations of Love) and Patricia Coelho, 28 (Simples Desejo). Monte, who is considered one of the most accomplished young song stylists in Brazil, imbues samba with modern cool; Coelho's rock- and pop-infused samba has the glossy allure of just licked lips...
...some sense in everything, find some trends, some meanings, some currents. Brazil gives and takes from the world. The rest of the world gives and takes from Brazil. Brazil took rhythms from Africa and fado music from Portugal and bits and pieces of other genres and came up with samba. Jobim took bits and pieces of samba and parts of the kind of "cool jazz" pioneered by Miles Davis and came up with bossa nova. Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil took the experimentation of the Beatles and the frustration of laboring under a military dictatorship and helped create Tropicalia. There...
...energy of American pop acts, but her work is anchored in the culture of Bahia and in serious artistic intent. Max de Castro, Patricia Coelho, the band Barao Vermelho, the group Nacao Zumbi and other young acts at the festival are adding hip-hop, trip-hop, and electronica to samba, bossa nova and Tropicalia. They are drawing from abroad but creating something Brazilian. After all, as Max de Castro points out, some of the foreign music that younger Brazilian so admire was inspired, in part, by Brazil to begin with. Sting gets a Grammy nod for singing the music...
...right as we land, right after the plane's crew thanks everyone for flying with them, guess what song comes on the over airplane's speakers? A Muzak version of "Desafinado." The guts of the song - the swing, the soul, the samba, the bossa-novaness of it - have all be ripped out and replaced by loaves of white bread. It is an almost perfect ending. A trip to Brazil to see how artists there are improving on the music of the world ends with a return to the outside world that ends with a display of how foreigners are screwing...