Take two bossanovas and call me in the morning

Written on Monday 15 August 2011

Sick with yet another bout of flu, so having a pyjama day.

Watching a DVD that was given to me as a gift by a dear friend, Diego Costa, from Brazil, a few years ago. It’s a recording of a 1978 concert, with Antonio Carlos Jobim, Vinicius de Moraes, Toquinho and vocalist, Miucha (sister of Chico Buarque de Holanda).

At the beginning of the concert, singer-guitarist Toquinho plays a medley of songs by Dorival Caymmi, whose compositions were inspired by his hometown, Salvador, a city that I spent just 34 hours in (in 2009), and which touched me profoundly.

When I watch and listen to this kind of music, played by the Brazilian masters of bossanova, I realize how deeply it’s influenced my own style of music. Brazilian music - especially the bossanova and samba - is tuneful, understated, usually with lyrics that are simple yet beautiful, dealing with topics we can easily relate to. This concert, featuring Brazil’s father of the bossanova, known as “Tom Jobim” by his people, is a pure delight to me; it’s all about the music, the instrumentation and vocals, with a notable absence of flash. Of course, I’m talking about a very specific style, played at a specific time in history, more than 30 years ago. The vocalists are so laid-back, they could be lying on the beach - or in a bath – singing! The intensity, however, is unmistakable. I love the rhythm and sensuality of Brazilian music. I love the nuances of the chords and how they subtly suggest emotions, tensions and resolutions.

I can’t remember when I first actively started listening to this style of music, but I think the first album I listened to must’ve been a Sergio Mendes one, when I was a teenager. Round the same time, I heard the Jobim-Gilberto-Getz one, featuring Astrud Gilberto on vocals.

DVD: Jobim and Vinicius now singing Felicidade, a song they co-write for a movie called Fel Negro. I hadn’t been aware of how much older Vinicius was than Jobim, although this might also have had something to do with lifestyle choices. It looks like Vinicius lived life by his own rules, because he openly smokes and drinks (alcohol) on stage, in this concert! He doesn’t look in a good state of health, either. Reading their biographies at the end of the DVD, I see that this concert took place 9 months before his death, in his late 60’s.

At the end of the concert, they play a medley of songs Vinicius co-wrote with prolific Brazilian musician, Baden Powell: Berimbau, Consolacao and Canto de Ossanha.

*********************************************************************
As a vocalist, I’ve always found it interesting how different genres of music favour and promote different types of voices and vocal styles. For example, the way in which Indian music is sung, versus the way Brazilian music is sung. Then there’s the operatic genre, which itself has subsections with distinctly different vocal approaches – think Italian versus German opera. Even Indian music, about which I’m basically ignorant, is not homogenous, in much the same way their national food has regional variations. I remember listening to a Brazilian student playing guitar and singing to me, at the last language school I worked at, and marveling at how his voice had all the cadences one always hears in Brazilian music – it struck me that that was the style in which that music is always sung. If you think of other genres of music, as well, like Country and Western or R&B, there are distinct styles of singing that seem to be genre-specific. Sometimes I think that inter-genre duets stretch things a bit, like Pavarotti and Bryan Adams – in my opinion, one of them is going to come off second best, depending on who’s listening and by whose standards they’re being judged.

I once auditioned for a rock band, and they asked me to sing anything. I sang “Words”, by the Bee Gees, and they said I sounded too jazzy. They asked me to name some of the songs I usually sang, and then nodded their heads at each other, while I mentioned a few titles, saying, “Jazz”, like it was a disease I should’ve attempted to conceal!

The late Eva Cassidy – a singer whose work I love – is reputed to have avoided recording, to a large extent, because she hated the way record labels wanted to pigeon-hole her, tie her down to one genre. Most of her recorded work we’re able to enjoy today was released posthumously. This beautiful songbird died of cancer in her 30’s. I should find out more about her life.

Like her, I have a problem being asked to describe or define my music. Yes, I have a folk/jazz/blues style, but every now and then, my mentor says my chords to a particular song I’ve written are “gospel” chords, like that’s a separate category. When I’m planning a concert, as I am now, and I’m busy selecting my originals for the show, I write down the titles, the keys, as well as they styles, and then I plan the programme, making sure we don’t play two consecutive songs in the same rhythm or key. But every now and then I find a song that doesn’t fit neatly into any of the bossa/samba/ballad/blues/folk categories, and I start to wonder why the hell I even have to categorise them.

Sting once said, in a recorded interview, that all his songs were like one song that he was spending his life writing. Hectic! I’m fascinated by Sting. Not because he’s married to someone called Trudie, but because he lives in a castle, with his own wing into which he retreats when he’s in songwriting mode, coming out only when he’s ready to. I’m not sure many musicians’ partners would be as accommodating as his. Then again, I’ve always suspected that periodic separation was the key to keeping a relationship alive. In Sting’s case, though, it’s probably that, PLUS the Tantric yoga they do together, which I believe has a lot going for it.

But that’s another story!