Youtubin': Naná Vasconcelos

Stumbled upon this incredible video of Naná on another plane with his berimbau, thought I'd share it. Complementing it is this breathtaking duet between Naná and Milton Nascimento on the latter's "San Vicente" - I love how Naná's role is pretty much sound ghost on this one. He should start doing solo ambient shows with that delayed mic, or a recording with loops in Brian Eno's Ambient series (if I could turn back time)...

Antonello Salis and Nana Vasconcelos - "Lester" (Soul Note, 1987)

So, the hotel room I'm in has a wifi connection so slow it's making me dream of screeching dial-up noises and the family PC... but I'm not going to let this sudden wind of blogging inspiration go unheeded. I've been away for a bit, wondering about the point of doing this, feeling like there's very little "community building" going on, just a lot of download-and-run (like I'm one to talk)... then one of my very favorite blogs, Invisible Arteries, got shut down...

All this to say, no big revelatory moment about why I'm suddenly anxious to post again. I think I'm still working towards that ideal of music sharing in an internet community, with no illusions (at least) that one day the daily effort that goes into blogging could disappear. Despite all this, I enjoy the search, finding something new to listen to, and someone with a fresh perspective on the music that strikes them.

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Nana Vasconcelos is someone I've been listening to quite a bit over the past few months, from his work with Codona to his solo excursions... This session of duets with Antonello Salis, an Italian pianist (who says in the liner notes that his then-inspiration was Keith Jarrett... a man after my own heart), sounds like a perfect match to me. With Salis on piano and accordion and Vasconcelos on everything else under the sun, what we get is something improvised, yet more energized/dense that his Codona forays...

Here's the title track as a preview, an astonishingly beautiful number whose mood parallels a Chris Marker short that stands as the cutest internet cat video of all time:

And the cute cat for comparison (thanks as usual, Jason Urick)...

Here

Various - Brazil Classics 1: Beleza Tropical (Sire, 1989)

I knew about David Byrne's interest in Brazilian music from his release of (several?) Tom Zé albums on his Luaka Bop label, but it was still an unexpected treat to find this compilation of some of the best-known names in MBP doing songs of which I was often unfamiliar. Jorge Ben, Maria Bethania, Gal Costa, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Milton Nascimento...they're all here. While the fare is mostly removed from the psychedelic energy of tropicalia and mixes samba with bossa nova, I love the melodies these artists create, weird noises and trippy soundscapes aside. I'll try to scrounge up the liner notes by Arto Lindsay and David Byrne, as well as Arto's English translations of the lyrics; the two do a good job of getting across the stakes of this music during Brazil's period of military dictatorship in the late '60's / early 70's. 

Here's a doc I found, an interview with David Byrne and a friend, on his projects about and interest in Brazilian music - haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet but will soon...

Beleza Tropical (Umbabarauma): documentary with David Byrne, Susan Young and Charlie Gillett from Susan Young on Vimeo.

(Two notes: Unavoidable fuzziness on the first track, which you probably have anyway [it's on J. Ben's "Africa Brasil"], and, weirdly, I just noticed that the last track listed on the LP back cover, " Terra" by Caetano Veloso, is not on the physical LP...)

Música