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BLAME
IT ON THE BOSSA NOVA
- Yo-Yo Ma's 'Obrigado Brazil' Album
By Christopher M. Wright
© 2004 Christopher M. Wright
All Rights Reserved
Hard to find good music these days? Here are some albums worth listening to. These recommendations are completely independent - AIM accepts no promotional fees or CDs whatsoever. The music rises or falls on its own merits. To be recommended, the music has to find its way into my collection and get played repeatedly. That rates an 'Honorable Mention' while 'Discovery', AIM's highest distinction, is reserved for those rare occasions when the music is among the best of its kind.
Yo-Yo Ma's 'Obrigado Brazil' contains many fine examples of Brazilian music, one of the most sophisticated and expressive of all musical genres. American pop music is kindergarten stuff compared to the syncopated rhythms and advanced chord changes found in Brazilian music.
The album was released in 2003, sold 250,000 copies by the end of the year, and won a Grammy award in 2004 for best classical crossover album. There is a follow-up live album - 'Yo-Yo Ma Obrigado Brazil: Live in Concert'.
'Obrigado Brazil' is another in a series of folk-oriented crossover projects from Yo-Yo Ma, who has been called a 'one-man global village'. "I kept listening to more and more Brazilian music and reading about the country," Ma told the Boston Globe. "At some point in the past, the decision was made on both the cultural and political fronts that pluralism would be Brazil's identity. Each decade, new streams flowed into the river of Brazilian music. This music is so special that it becomes a part of everyone's heritage."
Ma's previous musical journeys have taken him into Appalachian hollows, Argentina, and along the Silk Road. 'Obrigado Brazil' is more accessible than some of Ma's previous cross-over albums. The Appalachian series was somewhat artsy and difficult but 'Obrigado Brazil' is unfailingly melodic and expressive throughout.
One of the album's principal strengths is its level of musicianship. To listen is to learn subtleties of phrasing and articulation from the master musicians Ma recruited from Brazil, Cuba and elsewhere for the album. And he lets them play; the cello is not always out front. In addition to the cello, the album features piano, vocals, guitar, clarinet, percussion and flute in varying duets and ensembles.
Ma told the Boston Globe a story about the vocalist: "I loved the voice of a Brazilian singer named Rosa Passos. I wrote to her but didn't know whether I would ever hear from her. And then one day a neighbor dropped over with a letter from her and some CDs, explaining, 'My family lives in Newton [near Ma's house in Massachusetts], and Rosa Passos is my sister-in-law.' This is a very today kind of story - I thought I was dealing with something very far away, but in fact it was very close by."
The album contains selections from the twin titans of Brazilian music, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Heitor Villa-Lobos, as well as other composers.
Antonio Carlos Jobim (1927-1994)
"I believe I learned my songs from the birds of the Brazilian forest," Jobim once wrote. He grew up listening to Afro-Brazilian samba but was later influenced by the French impressionists Debussy and Ravel as well as the cool jazz of Miles Davis and Gil Evans.
Jobim played piano in little bars known as inferminhos ('little hells'). He went to work for a record company as an assistant arranger. He was asked to write the music for a stage production that later became 'Black Orpheus', winner of the Cannes film festival in 1959.
Jobim's name is associated with the bossa nova ('new beat'), a melodic fusion of samba and American jazz that arose in the late 1950's. Samba had started in the favelas (shantytowns) of Rio and other Brazilian cities. Jobim was not the originator of the bossa nova style but is arguably its most successful practitioner. His songs have been performed by Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, and many others
One Jobim tune included on Ma's album, 'Chega de Saudade' (No More Blues), has been called the first bossa nova record. It broke sales records in Brazil in 1959 but it almost didn't get heard at all. A record company executive disliked the new bossa nova style so much that he broke the demo copy of 'Chega' he had been given.
Jobim co-wrote 'The Girl from Ipanema' which was a smash hit and started the bossa nova craze in the United States in the 1960's. 'Ipanema', as recorded by jazz saxophonist Stan Getz with the Brazilian guitarist João Gilberto and singer Astrud Gilberto, won a Grammy award in 1963. Some of the biggest stars in America jumped on the bossa nova bandwagon that same year. Eydie Gorme sang 'Blame It on the Bossa Nova' and Elvis Presley released 'Bossa Nova Baby'. 'Ipanema' got a cooler reception in Brazil where the bossa nova was criticized for being too Americanized. Jobim defended his work, saying it was samba, not jazz. He also said it incorporated harmonies from Villa-Lobos, Chopin, and other classical composers.
Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959)
Classical composer Heitor Villa-Lobos was largely self-taught. "One foot in the academy and you are changed for the worst!," he said. He spent time in Paris where he was influenced by the work of Satie and Milhaud, but, above all else, he was captivated by the music of his own country. Many of his works incorporate local colorings and rhythms. The choro, played by musicians in Rio just for fun and during Carnival, inspired a cycle of 14 works for different ensembles. In them, Villa-Lobos blended modern compositional techniques with the urban music of his day. A neoclassicist series of works called Bachianas Brasileiras infused old Baroque forms with Brazilian folk elements.
An enthusiastic ethnomusicologist, Villa-Lobos made several trips to the northeastern states of Brazil and into the Amazon interior to collect samples of folk music. He would come back from these trips chomping on his cigar and telling tall tales about his encounters with the cannibalistic tribes of the north.
Villa-Lobos' music has been called nationalistic, an expression of his pride in Brazil's national identity. "Yes, I’m Brazilian - very Brazilian," he once said. "In my music, I let the rivers and seas of this great Brazil sing. I don’t put a gag on the tropical exuberance of our forests and our skies, which I intuitively transpose to everything I write."
On his return from Paris, Villa-Lobos became director of music education in Rio de Janeiro. He designed a music curriculum rich in local color and rooted in patriotism that was presented to generations of Brazilian schoolchildren. He assembled as many as 40,000 kids at a time into his giant choirs and musical programs.
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© 2004 Christopher M. Wright
All Rights Reserved - This material may not
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