Brazilliance

December 06: Luckily enough caught
the Marco Pereira
gig in Singapore.
Brazilians have
the knack of making
music with
passionate intensity.
While other performers
tend to merely play the
instrument with clinical
imprecision (all
too often) Brazilians
play it brimming with
fire; with Marco it was
like listening to a flamenco performance
except that Marco was playing South
American compositions (Brouwer,
Piazzola or Jobim). Funnily enough,
he was introduced as having been in a recent
accident in Malaysia where he had fractured a
few ribs - an event which might have made
for a 'no-show' in other cases. However, the way
he played - I wouldn't be surprised if he had
dislodged a couple of ribs in the course of the
Singapore performance... Three cheers for
the miracle though!

Picked up chill: brazil3 and was immediately taken by Celso
Fonseca's slow motion bossa nova (you're so good to me) - a
beautiful bossa focusing on a writer in love. The bossa mode
seems to be eminently suited to a slow lyric tempo although
there are the occasional frothy & successfully bubbly one's
like Jobim's So Danco Samba; but the bubbly ones are rare
in relation to the ones that express (not necessarily the darker
side) but the more thoughtful or meditative moods -
occasionally descending into bathos; Jobim's Corcovado or
certainly Meditacao appear to be generally more successful;
the loping rhythm of the bossa is wrung to the full in such
songs which, deceptively, often appear understated
or restrained. Scratch a little beneath the surface
however and you're bound to uncover a powerhouse
of passion eg Jobim's Amor Em Paz /Once I Loved -
especially as sung by Shirley Horn in the CD Bossa
Nova: Soothing Sounds of Brazil.)

Brook's Blues Bar

Date: 17th June, 2005. We were on Shepherd's Bush Road, Hammersmith, after a terrific Spanish meal at Los Molinos - which has better tapas than what we'd sampled in the restaurants we'd visited in downtown Barcelona - we crossed the road to Brook Green Hotel where we'd earlier noted that the Brook's Blues Bar had posted something about a blues event that night starting at 9.30pm or so. Friday night - the day before our departure for Singapore - why not savour what the British were doing with acoustic blues?
Down the dark stairway to a table at the entrance to a dimly-lit, semi-crowded basement bar where a large, gently-spoken lady politely ensured we paid our dues - six pounds sterling each,
if I remember right; the show was to begin at nine-thirty; the stage was set.
We sat sipping our drinks expectantly while our two boys (young men rather) were at their handphones trying to block out the surroundings since they weren't into this kind of music.
We noticed a group of very tall blacks, like American basketball
players, peering over the large lady by the doorway then deciding against coming in... they waved at the lady, muttering something inaudible and disappeared up the stairs again.
On stage, there was Gordon Smith, flamboyantly shirted - handling the guitar like the way he wore his shirt, I suppose, while someone bearded struck a few chords on a honky tonk piano (it must have been Tim Penn). I gulped my pint of Newcastle Bitter thirstily as the trio comprising singer/guitarist, pianist & drummer broke into a run resembling something from Leadbelly, Big Bill Broonzy or Howlin' Wolf... I couldn't tell which, but it sounded vintage Deep South. Man, where did these Englishmen learn to play Deep South - the rawness of country passion, the twang of dark discontent, the hidden rhythms of the heart... this was cardiac surgery of a very high level indeed. It could have been the Newcastle Bitter but my mind began to wander into channels of profundity like: Is this a subtle form of globalisation - this transplantation of intimate aural cultural iconography from the Deep South to Hammersmith? How come such a crossover from the Deep South to London can still appear authentic? Where did these guys get their coolness & intimacy with Southern music without being actually black? A big toast to British blues in the wake of all the turbulence that globalisation can often bring with it; it's a pity but what a show those black basketballers missed, I thought to myself. NB Latest Update: Brook's Blues Bar is no longer at Shepherds Bush Tony Brooks tells me and if you want that British Blues experience that I got a glimpse of in my blog, you need to go to The Telegraph on Putney Heath (SW15 3TU).The next time I go to Britain, I'll head for Putney Heath; thanks Tony...

The Oud Couple

The Recital Studio performances at the Esplanade constitute a less formal music series that will serve as an important eye-opener - or should I call it "ear-opener" - for the music lover. The series provides an opportunity for the appreciation of non-mainstream music since the capital outlay would appear to be less awesome (one can think in terms of an audience size of a hundred and fifty or so; and if there aren't enough seats some could sit on the floor, for instance). There have been exciting and successful performances like that of the Indojazz group from Indonesia who showed how jazz had evolved on the back of Balinese music in their country; however, the two Ouds of DuOuds, who performed on 21 & 22 Jan this year, gave a different insight into how contemporary influences affected traditional music; here it was just louder - because amplified -and crazier - because of all that electronic gadgetry. Altogether, the music blasted the audience with the kind of crude intensity reminiscent of some forms of acid rock in some urban club frequented by under nineteens and it didn't seem like new music - just old pop
stuff which airheads dance to.
One gets the impression that there's a fairly easy way of producing the new world music: get traditional instruments; link them to amplifiers with wahwah & a host of other sound effects; play traditional tunes - because even these sound different on amplified instrumentation...
Somehow, one feels that something is missing; it just sounds like old music distorted to the nth degree. The fact that the musicians employ electronic gadgetry should not be any indication that the music they play is new since otherwise we would need to consider The Shadows, Les Paul et al to be icons of the future... However, there's yet a bright side: it was a rather ear-opening experience providing some insight, by negative definition, into the shape of new world music.
(NB: The oud is a traditional stringed instrument from the Middle East and North Africa; it could very well have been a precursor of the lute).