For longtime Samba fans or newcomers interested in exploring Brazil’s most popular music, this five-star collection is a panorama of traditional and contemporary style. Each song is hand picked by Gerald Seligman, who also authors the detailed liner notes, with insight into the songs and the performers.
Other Voices:
From the liner notes:
“Who doesn’t like samba you’d rather not meet. He’s sick in the head or just lame in the feet.” - Dorival Caymmi, from the lyrics of ‘Samba da Minha Terra’
Dorival said it best. Who can resist the head-pounding rhythm of samba? It’s 2/4 signature is the very pulse of Brazil; sensual. insistant, the musical equivalent of pure joy. “You can find in Cuba and the Caribbean Islands wonderful rhythms,’ says popular artist Caetano Veloso, “and wonderful percussive end rhythmic fabrics, but in Brazil we have this samba thing which is more difficult to grasp. Maybe it is at the same time more confused and subtler and, in a way, richer. It is less formalized from the beginning.,, and that gives a kind of freedom for the experience of music in Brazil- You really feel as if you could do anything.
Not only can you do anything, but, as sambista Beth Carvalho notes, it is at the root of so much that is at the very core of what it is to be Brazilian. It’s, she says, “the origin of practically everything’. Singer-songwriter Joao Bosco goes so far as to say, “The samba represents a perfect profile of Brazil.” Adds Carvalho, “The people who make samba basically come from the lower classes, And all of those so-called educated Brazilian composers drink from this fountain, It’s where it all comes from.”
RHYTHM AND BLUES
Even a cursory listen to samba calls to the fore two perhaps contrasting impressions that go a long way toward defining the music, For while the rhythms are uplifting and an expression of happiness in being, the melodies are tinged with more than a trace of melancholy. At its best, it is this contrast that brings out the poignancy in samba, that gives it its richness and depth. Too much rhythm and the melody is overwhelmed: too much melancholy and the music becomes cloyingly sentimental, But get it right and samba is a revelation.
Singer-songwriter Joyce notes. “We Brazilians are a product of three different races:” the Indians, who were “the first Brazilians” the Portuguese, and the Blacks who came from Africa as slaves and who have “deeply influenced Brazilian music.” Though she rightly speaks of many others comprising the national tapestry, these she emphasizes. They are “fundamental for the understanding of Brazilian music. They brought their traditions, their instruments and their feelings, too. The Portuguese for instance, they are a very nostalgic and melancholic people, so they brought this kind of sadness to Brazilian music, But mixed up with African music it becomes a very sensuous and happy sadness.”
A SHORT HISTORY
Samba is the music of Black Brazil. The embryo of its rhythm came from Africa, but it was in its collision with Western song forms and, as Joyce noted, especially Portuguese sensibilities that the hybrid was born. The samba first evolved during the early years of this century - Brought to Rio be Janeiro by Blacks from the northeastern state of Bahia, which has the strongest concentration of African descendants in all of Brazil, it developed informally, at small gatherings in the house of a Baiana known fondly as Aunt Ciata, She served sweets and light meals and her place became a center for informal musical gatherings. Whenever Brazilians relax, instruments appear. For percussion everyone grabs whatever is at hand, from proper drums and tambourines to anything from empty beer bottles to boxes of matches. As always, syncretism leads the day. And so in Aunt Ciata’s parlour Brazilian rhythms like the ‘Maxixe’ collided with those from Africa, song forms from Europe were introduced, homegrown Brazilian inflections were added - - whatever passed by Aunt Ciata’s house was collared and transformed.
By the 1920s a new generation of composers and performers took to the form and creativity exploded. Composers like Noel Rosa or songwriting teams like Bide and Marçal, represented here by Leila Pinheiro’s cover of ‘A Primeira Vez,’ the people’s poet Cartola and many others created its first enduring successes, From the start samba was primarily a dance music that spoke to the soul. And spoke literally and literately. In its verses are some of the best and purest poetry to be found anywhere.
Musically it is also host to a variety of terms arid variations. Tourists return home with the sound of ‘Samba Enredo’ pounding in their ears, the carnival samba played for maximum effect and minimal subtlety. But samba is a blanket term for a whole host of related rhythms: the balled-like Samba Canção; the 1960s variation ‘Samba de Bossa Nova’; ‘Samba de Terreiro’, which is linked to Afro-Brazilian religion; ‘Samba de Roda’; ‘Samba de Quadra’; ‘Samba de Partido Alto’; ‘Samba de Breque’; ‘Samba Exaltação’; you get the idea. Joao Bosco explains, “The rhythms are set designs, but each melody makes a samba more or less personalized. There exists a bed of samba. Whoever lies in it does something different and creates something new.”
Samba is a music of pleasure, regardless of the content of its lyrics. Whether talking about the ills of society, the trials of its poor, the travails of love, the love of football, whatever, like the blues, Samba is transcendent, rarely escapist. “Samba is sentiment,” says Bosco, “black, streetwise, full of syncopation. The big secret of samba is the beat that isn’t in the samba itself, but in the head and in the feet of each person.” Adds Beth Carvalho, “Samba is more than a music. It is a faith, it is a narrative… that expresses the everyday life of the Brazilian people.”
SAMBA! THE SONGS
Samba!, the compilation, represents a mere sampling of EMI Odeon’s vast archive. With recordings that stretch back to the first years of the 20th century, rest assured that you can stay tuned for other volumes at later dates. Here, however, are some of samba’s greatest names and many of its most endearing songs. The aim here was not to create a traditional “best of.’ Besides a few obvious standouts, there are other songs that are better known: It is, instead, a look - - a listen, rather - - at what samba does best and most enjoyably. It simply aims to please.
1) Simone: Tô Voltando / I’m Returning (Mauricie Tapajos/Paulo Cesar Pinheiro) 1979
Simone is well known as an MPB artist, the acronym for Brazilian Popular Music, in the always-inventive Brazilian mainstream. As an accomplished interpreter of Brazil’s greatest songwriters, especially of their ballads, Simone has made her most indelible mark. However, in earlier years she took to tossing off the occasional upbeat samba, as here on “Tô Voltando,” It’s the combination of her trademark sultry and sensual vocal matched to the crisp samba rhythm that gives this song its striking contrast and makes it succeed so brilliantly. “Tô Voltando” is a song of homecoming. Put beer on ice, heat up the black beans on the stove, call our friends around, I’m returning, it says.
2) Clara Nunes: Tristeza Pé No Chão / Sadness, Rooted On the Ground (Armando Fernandes Mamão) 1973
Hemisphere recently released the Clara Nunes duets album called ‘ComVida’ (724383723324). Arguably. Clara was Brazils greatest and most authentic interpreter of samba. Here is the late Clara on her own with “Tristeza Pé No Chão.” Her widower, the poet and lyricist Paulo César Pinheiro, said of Clara, “She wanted to leave a work that would be musical map of Brazil, so she sang of not only the day-to-day but of religious issues, customs, the very foundations of the people. She revealed the country. Her work is a Brazilian profile as much in rhythms as in messages, customs, traditions and mysticisms. You pick up a work of hers end you see Brazil, There’s no doubt about it.” “Tristeza Pé No Chão” is a samba recipe, with a detailed listing of all its delicious musical ingredients.
3) Abel Ferreira: Saxofone, Por Que Choras? / Saxophone, Why Cry? (Ratinho) 1962
Abel was master of the style called Chorinho. Choro, for short, means “to cry’ in Portuguese, and the music is named as such for its poignant and melancholy nature. Most often instrumental, there are choros with lyrics as well. The standard instruments are cavaquinho (a 4-stringed instrument akin to a large ukulele). 7-stringed guitar, clarinet and saxophone (both played with consummate mastery by Abel), mandolin and tambourine. Its greatest names included Pixinguinha, Waldir Azevedo, Ratinho and Jararaca, and Abel Ferreira himself, who here plays a deliciously slippery sax melody.
4) Paullnho da Viola: Roendo as Unhas / Scraping Nails (Paulinho da Viola) 1973
Paulinho da Viola, the well-known samba composer, writes songs for a host of interpreters, and many of his best compositions have become classics of the genre. He also recorded his own works over the course of a 30-year career and scores of albums. Whereas the bulk of his repertoire is accomplished, straight-ahead samba and an occasional Choro, he does occasionally offer highly innovative works. “Roendo as Unhas is a perfect case in point. Eccentric as it is original.
5) Jurema: Quisera Ser Eu / I Wish It Were Me (Luis Carlos) 1980
Jurema had a short-lived career, peaking in the early 1980s. Sadly, she remains vary much a footnote to modern Brazilian music. “Quisera Ser Eu” shows the pity it is that she did not record more. In a gruff voice that recalls slightly raunchy American R&B styles, her samba is rooted in the informal, street samba of the Rio favelas, or slums.
6) Wilson Moreira & Nei Lopes: Samba do Irajá / Não Foi Ela
Irajá Samba / It Wasn’t Her (Nei Lopes / Nei Lopes & Wilson Moreira) 1980
As a songwriting team, Moreira and Lopes wrote many prized Sambas for a variety of interpreters, from Beth Carvalho to Clara Nunes. On their own they recorded two albums for BMI. Wilson Moreira has gone on to turn in several others in recent years, all superlative. I had the pleasure of befriending him when I lived in Rio and would often frequent his little bar in the Rio neighbourhood of Santa Teresa: lands crowd of many others. Some of Rio’s boat Samba and Choro sessions took place there. Wilson was once a prison warder, though his easy-going and gentle manner would suggest otherwise.
7) Elis Regina & Adoniran Barbosa: Tiro Ao Alvaro / Hit the Bulls Eye (Adoniran Barbosa / Qswaldo Molles) 1980
Elis was arguably Brazil’s greatest single interpreter of MPB. Over the course of over 20 albums she almost single-handed found and established a whole new generation of songwriters, linking Gilberto Gil, Milton Nascimento, João Bosco and Ivan Lins to their first publics. Hearing her for the first time is a revelation, hearing her again a lifelong passion, such is the voice of Elis, which can convey more emotion in a single phrase, sometimes in a single pained sigh or high-spirited yelp than most artists can in an entire song. Shortly before she died of a tragic drug and alcohol overdose she even recorded a full album of the songs of Antonio Carlos Jobim, who explained her appeal to me this way: “When we lost Elis we lost a great singer, a wonderful woman. She was very warm, she was full of life, wanting to sing all the time. She could change - - suddenly she was water, wine, cachaça, she was whatever she wanted. She had great command of her body and soul.” In this song, Elis duets briefly with the composer Adoniran Barbosa inst that took place near the end of the composer’s life. Adoniran helped forge the Samba Paulista style, named for his São Paulo home.
8) Doris Monteiro: De Noite, Na Cama / At Night, In Bed (Caetano Veloso) 1971
A great song by Caetano Veloso, moat recently covered by Marisa Monte. Here it is Doris Monteiro who turns in a funky, rhythmic end downright sexy rendition, Doris is best known as a singer of Samba Cançao, as the ballad style is known. She has fallen from favour in recent years and rarely, if ever, records anymore. Yet her many EMI albums attest to an adventurous spirit wedded to the most sensual voice and delivery.
9) Gonzaguinha: Geraldinos e Arquibaldos (…people’d names…) (Luiz Gonzaga Jr.) 1975
Fully a cappelpa, with Gonzaguinha himself providing at tracked vocals. This is a soccer match in song. Complete with a play-by-play account of the proceedings. Gonzaguinha had a dual career as songwriter for others (Simone and Nana Caymmi are perhaps his most faithful interpreters) and singer - as on perhaps a dozen of his own albums. Born In Minas Geraes (home of João Bosco and Milton Nascimento), he is the son of the great Forró artist Luis Gonzaga. Gonzaguinha, by the way, means ‘little Gonzaga’, whereas Gonzagão. as his father is known, means ‘big Gonzaga’.
10) Leila Pinheiro: A Primeira Vez / The First Time (Bide/Marçal) 1994
When Leila began recording in the early 1980s, many called her the heiress to Elis Regina, so welcome was her appearance on a scene, which, for the first time in several decades, was seeing a dearth of first-rate new interpreters. In the years since, she has gone from strength to strength. She has carved an especially rich niche for herself in offering modern but sensitive arrangements of classic Bossa Nova. “I’ve been singing it since I was born”, she told me. Here she performs an old Samba in Bossa Nova style. The songwriters Bide and Marçal were from Samba’s first generation and wrote songs that are cherished to this day. Marçel initiated something of a rhythm dynasty. His son, Mestre Marçal was himself an accomplished samba composer and percussionist and his grandson Armando Marçal is another percussionist and was for a long time a member of Pat Metheny’s group.
11) Dorival Caymmi: Samba da Minha Terra / Samba of My Land (Dorival Caymmi) 1957
The great Dorival Caymmi, modern father of Bahian music and real father to a musical dynasty with daughter Nana Caymmi and sons Danilo and Dori. Caymmi’s greatest gift is irrepressible ease and good humour tied to songs that match simple but precise poetry to melodies that are so right and rich as to sound familiar even upon first listening. He is known to have known to have worked individual verses for months at a time, honing them to the sharpest of observations. His friend the writer Jorge (“Dona Flor,” “Gabriela”) Amado says, “His theme is Bahia, its life, its people, its drama, its struggle, its mystery, its poetry, its loves, the morena [darkhaired girls] of Itapoã and the roses of April, Iemanjá [Goddess of the seas) and the wind from the ocean, the sailboat and the schooner, the world of Bahia. There isn’t a single phrase of his music or poetry that is circumstantial, that comes from a flighty fad or a momentary influence…” This wonderful song is from an entirely solo acoustic masterpiece that Dorival recorded in 1957. The song itself was one of his earliest. In his mid-80s he is still going strong.
12) João Gilberto: Corcovado (Antonio Carlos Jobim) 1960
Said Tom Jobim, “João Gilberto appeared as a light, as a big star in the firmament, in the heavens. He became a focus.,. Yes, the guy who brought the Bossa Nova beat to the world was João Gilberto,” Caetano Veloso seconds the enthusiasm, “João Gilberto is the starting place for understanding Brazilian music. Everything he did and does illuminates the past and future of the music in Brazil, -- What João did was distill the percussive elements of samba to their finest essences in helping to create Bossa Nova. ‘Corcovado’ is one of the early songs that established his - - and Jobim’s - - reigning talent.
13) Djavan: Samba Dobrado / Samba In Double Time (Djavan) 1978
Contemporary, rhythmic, sensual and captivating, the music of Djavan is a marvel of that amalgam of influences that makes Brazilian music such a mainstay of international attention. He creased a music that is very much rooted in the rhythm of Samba and Bossa Nova and other national styles melded with an infectious take on pop jazz. Born in the Northeastern state of Alagoas, Djavan came to public attention after moving to Rio in his early 20s. Everyone from Quincy Jones to Stevie Wonder sings his praises. In Brazil his songs are covered and coveted by the best interpreters.
14) Ivan Lins: Antes Que Seja Tarde / Before Its Too Late (Ivan Lins/Victor Martins) 1979
As with many singers before him, Ivan Lins was first introduced to Brazilian audiences by Ella Regina, when she recorded his first hit “Madalena” in 1971. Lins was born in Rio de Janeiro end his music is marked by Samba, jazz and Bossa Nova with ever more sweeping forays into rock. This track perfectly captures his middle period of the late-1970s, when his music plumbed the most Brazilian of traditions.
15) Agora É Samba: Tié (…a name…) (Yvone Lara / Helio / Fuleiro) 1974
A song by the famed sambista Dona Yvone Lara is here given a rendition by a group assembled for a one-off album in the 1970s. It is a clear example of Samba performed in a stripped-down style that has long-since disappeared from record, though it still can be heard in favela backyards.
16) Conjunto Sal da Terra: Dingue Li Bangue (… vocalese...) (J.D. San / Mac Donys) 1973
Yes, you do hear the words “Sex machine” in the lyric. You are not hallucinating. The track comes from a rare album of songs based on the Afro-Brazilian religion of candomblé. I’ve never heard of the group before or since. More’s the pity: this one track is an eccentric prize.
17) Os Chorões: Na Glória / In Glória (… a Rio neighbourhood..) (Raul de Barros / Ary dos Santos / Felipe Tedesco) 1970
Classically-trained Radames Gnattali formed this group of Choro virtuosos to record a wonderful yet nearly forgotten album of their own and others compositions. The musicianship is astonishingly good and swinging - - jazz meets Brazil on its own beloved turf.
18) Carmen Miranda & Dorival Caymmi: O Que É Que A Baiana Tem? / What Is It That a Baiana’s Got? (Dorival Caymmi) 1939
When Dorival Caymmi wrote this song for Carmen Miranda, he cannot have known that it would have become one of her signature pieces. The story goes that it was Dorival himself who taught Carmen her famed hand movements for her so use in this very song. Carmen was the first Brazilian star to make it in Hollywood, where her comic talents ended up obscuring her verve and genius ass serious musical interpreter. Her phrasing and ebullience are second to none. This track comes from a remastered 78 and is a fitting end to Samba!
Notes by Gerald Seligman
