Young men when the samba was written, Mestres Pedro Alves & José Grora of SAMBA-CHULA DE MARACANGALHA
continue the tradition of their communty's association with great music!

Dorival Caymmi

Unfortunately, the intrigue around Maracangalha grew a few years ago to include far more than one man's family life...

An airplane carrying millions of reais (Brazilian currency; it was also the equivalent of millions of dollars or euros) crashed onto a ranch just outside the municipality, killing the pilots and security men and spreading money around the immediate area...

The aftermath of this affair included plunder, murder, kidnappings, and torture; involving local residents, homeless members of a nearby "tent city", police, and men posing as police...but as all this is outside of what I consider to be the scope, provenance, and purview of this site, I'll leave it at that.

Riachão: Bahia's 90 year old Mister Dynamite!

Five feet two inches of pure samba power!

Click here to listen to Riachão get down on some smokin' samba-de-roda!

And check out the trailer below (I love the part where Riachão talks about Jesus sending down the samba!)...

Reclusive Genius

Ederaldo Gentil

Ederaldo Gentil, born July 7, 1943, was the boy wonder of Carnival in Bahia.  Living in the Salvador neighborhood of Tororó (his family having moved there from the neighborhood of Dois de Julho) he became something of a house composer for Carnival samba school Filhos de Tororó until he quit the school in 1969.  The following year -- 1970 -- saw every Carnival school but the Filhos de Tororó marching to a song composed by Ederaldo Gentil!

Ederaldo went on to see his music recorded by a host of Brazilian greats, including Jair Rodrigues, Alcione, and Leny Andrade, but, with the shift in the music of Bahia's Carnival to the mixed bag known locally here as "axé music", he went from being an acknowledged force behind real Bahian music of substance to a representative of a less popular and commercially unviable style (samba; would you believe it?!).  It was too much for him and in the early 90's he sank from site, rarely leaving his apartment in the Salvador neighborhood of Vila Laura.

In order to help Ederaldo out financially, in 1999 his friend and musical comrade Edil Pacheco organized a marvelous disc (Pérolas Finas) of Ederaldo's compositions sung by a panoply of Brazil's brightest stars, including Gilberto Gil, Beth Carvalho, João Nogueira, Carlinhos Brown, and others.

Below are a couple of tunes, the first undoubtedly the most eloquent hymn to miscegenation ever composed (sung by Gilberto Gil), the second a no-less-eloquent hymn to samba-chula in Salvador's neighborhood of Nordeste de Amaralina, this one sung by Ederaldo himself.

Out of the Afoxés and into Popular Culture

Edil Pacheco

Anybody remember this record?  It was released (in 1988) in the U.S. by Mango -- an imprint of Island Records -- and in Brazil by PolyGram*.  It was a collection of music based in the afros and afoxés of Bahia, that music having been composed by Edil Pacheco (together with lyricist Paulo César Pinheiro).  Edmilson de Jesus Pacheco (born June 1st, 1945) is one cool dude!

He's from Maragogipe, Bahia (on the other side of the bay, where the Paraguaçu River gives onto the Baia de Todos os Santos), and is a prolific composer of sambas and ijexá-based music, tunes which have been covered by a plethora of Brazilian greats (including a divine songstress whose style dovetailed so neatly with Edil's own -- Clara Nunes).

* The liner notes were translated by Regina Werneck, who may not have been responsible for equating "Malé Debalé" with "Happy Blacks".  A more accurate translation would be "Dancing Malés", the Malés being honored for their 1835 uprising.

Future Shock!

If you're ever in a spaceship, skimming lowly and slowly in technodrive over steaming jungle while your jazz-bearded pilot channels up the chanting, rattling, buzzing and beating from below, that pilot will almost undoubtedly be Ramiro Musotto.

Ramiro is an Argentine who has been living here in Salvador for the last fifteen years or so, rattle-buzz-and-beat master to the likes of Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Sergio Mendes, Marisa Monte, Daniela Mercury... his CD Sudaka melding Afro-Brazilian rhythms with samples from Camafeu de Oxossi, Ilê Aiyê, Congo pygmies, the film Deus e o Diabo na Terra do Sol (God and the Devil in the Land of the Sun), and more.  Wild ride!

*Since this was written Ramiro has passed on. He continues to be a great and beloved soul.

Watch Ramiro Musotto

Bust a Riff, Brasil-Stylie!

Luciano Calazans

There are some great jazz bass players in the world, and Luciano Calazans (a Salvador native living in the neighborhood of Barris) is one of them.  What he has -- and the others don't -- is a bone-deep Brazilian sensibility and a peerless knowledge of Brazilian rhythms woven into his compositions and style.  A facile, but not entirely futile, collocation might be "the Brazilian Jaco Pastorius" (Luciano has a pithy tale of one cold night outside a jazz bar on the south side of Chicago, when there was no way the passing taxis could be bothered to consider him and his two musician companions as fares {the three were on a night off from Margareth Menezes' U.S. tour}.  In desperation Luciano approached a cop -- African American -- who was able to hail a cab for them.  And no, language wasn't the problem...Luciano speaks excellent English.)

The first cut below features the trumpet of Joatan Nascimento, born in Alagoas but since 1987 residing in Salvador, and the vocals of Salvador native Tito Bahiense (now living in São Paulo), who has a song featured on Gal Costa's latest CD.  Another place to hear Luciano's bass-playing is on Gilberto Gil's latest record (Eu Tu Eles).

New Orleans > Kansas City > New York > Havana > BAHIA!

Jurandir Santana weaves Bahia and Brazil into a sweet jazz guitar style Brazilian to the core...the song below utilizing, to beautiful effect, the rhythm of Bahia's afoxés (ijexá).

Other Santana compositions are written in styles utilizing chula (including the first track of Jurandir's CD "Só Brasil", incorporating a percussive fingering technique invented by Roberto Mendes, below), and various other forms of samba.

New Orleans to Bahia... that is one natural harmonic progression meu/minha irmão/irmã!

Son of Santo Amaro

Roberto Mendes & Raimundo Sodré

Roberto Mendes is from Santo Amaro, Bahia -- that treasure chest of chula and samba-de-roda -- and these are what Roberto plays.  Drinking from a font in common with Santo Amaro's illustrious Velloso family (the better-known being Maria Bethânia, Caetano, and Jota), a very local musical cross-pollination includes Maria's singing of Roberto's compositions on various of her discs (including Brasileirinho's powerful Yáyá Masemba), and Caetano's participation on Roberto's 1992 Matriz as well as on Roberto's latest CD Tradução (along with Margareth Menezes, Jussara Silveira, and Barravento).  Roberto's 1988 release Flama included the participation of Gilberto Gil and Dona Edith do Prato.

Unlike his better-known associates, Roberto Mendes continues to this day to live in Santa Amaro (on a street parallel to and one block over from that of the house of matriarch Dona Canô).  Nothing prodigal about this son!

Another Rising Son of Santo Amaro

Jota Velloso

Jota Velloso -- producer, composer, and singer -- didn't follow the newer Brazilian orthography changes and simplify the spelling of his last name (per his uncle, Caetano).  Neither has he bent nor does he bend to the evershifting winds of currentcool when it comes to producing records or playing on stage; if you have a chance to catch him up there you can be sure that he won't be flanked by the gyrating scantily-clad oh-so-lovelies common to other bands here.  More likely his stage-partners will be the white-clad Vozes de Purificação (Voices of Purification) -- choir of the Igreja da Nossa Senhora da Purificação (Church of Our Lady of the Purification) in Santa Amaro -- a group of ladies whose youth is expressed in their exultory spirit if not in the shape of their hips.  I'm reminded of an old Tower of Power song...

Jota's productions include Batatinha's (Oscar da Penha) Diplomacia (released in 1998, with the participation of Maria Bethânia, Chico Buarque, Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso, Jussara Silveira, Nelson Rufino, Walmir Lima, Edil Pacheco, and Riachão), a CD of the cânticos of Salvador's beloved pai-de-santo Luís da Muriçoca, Riachão's Humanenochun (with the participation of Carlinhos Brown, Dona Ivone Lara, Roque Ferreira, Tom Zé, Armandinho, Caetano Veloso, Sabiá, and Claudete Macedo), and Dona Edith do Prato.  Quality is quool!

Luís da Muriçoca

Legacy and Legend

Dorival Caymmi

If you have anything to do with Bahia for any length of time, sooner or later you're going to bump into (figuratively speaking) the 800-pound-gorilla of Bahian music -- Dorival Caymmi.  It may be that you may have already come across him on late night TV, saucy-eyed Carmen Miranda belting out his O Que É que a Baiana Tem? while undulating through her1939 feature Banana da Terra.

Sr. Caymmi was born in Salvador on April 30, 1914, great-grandson of an Italian immigrant by the name of Enrico Caimi -- it wasn't only upon arrival to Ellis Island that surnames were changed -- and grandson of Erico's blue-eyed son Henrique and a mulata by the name of Saloméa de Souza... and although he's lived in Rio for decades he remains the unofficial musical poet laureate of Bahia, singing of fishermen and the sea, mysteries, byways, women.  He was friend to Jorge Amado and composed the lovely and widely heard theme to the film version of Amado's book Gabriela, Cravo and Canela (Gabriela, Cinnamon and Clove).  But one of my personal favorites is (of course) the samba-de-roda Adalgisa (sung here by Jussara Silveira), with the refrain "Adalgisa mandou dizer que a Bahia tá viva ainda lá!" ("Adalgisa said to say that Bahia is still alive there!").

That's Bossa, Man!

João Gilberto

Been around long enough to have seen your grandparents -- pre British-Invasion 1960s -- shuffling hands-to-hips across the living room carpet while Stan Getz's tenor intoned and Astrud Gilberto sang so sensually/sweetly from the LP on the stereo turntable?  Or maybe your parents were doing the shuffling?  Or even you yourself, venerable one?  These were the glory years of bossa nova, a revolutionary musical style created by Astrud's husband João Gilberto (João Gilberto do Prado Pereira de Oliveira, born June 10th, 1931) out of Juazeiro, Bahia.  João took his sound to Rio where he fell in with the great Antonio Carlos Jobim and others who would take the fledgling creation and apply their full and considerable talents to what was a highly innovative way of combining the rhythms of guitar and voice (the moniker "Bossa Nova" slangily translates to "New Style", the term first being used in a newspaper article by a journalist who didn't have any other way of describing the music).

P.S. The photo of João Gilberto above right was taken (in New York City's Rainbow Room circa 1969) by formidable Martin Cohen -- founder of Latin Percussion and force behind the fascinating website at Congahead.com.  The photo is reproduced with Sr. Cohen's kind permission.

Martin "Conga Head" Cohen

Bright Melancholy and the Diplomat of Bahian Samba

Batatinha (Oscar da Penha, born on the 5th of August, 1924 and in his youth a resident of Pelourinho) played the matchbox and composed lovely sambas to many of which are ascribed the adjective "sad".  I don't believe this word conotes the right flavor, "wistful" in my opinion being more delicately like it.

A couple of songs come up in the player below, "Babá de Luxo", followed by "Marta".  "Babá de Luxo" is "Luxurious Babysitter", written for a lovely young woman -- working at the time as a babysitter -- who happened into the studio one day while Batatinha was recording.  "Marta" was subsequently written to appease Batatinha's wife, who upon hearing the babysitter story... well, you know.

Batatinha died on the 3rd of January, 1997, aged 72 years.

Yoruban Lyricism

Inaicyra

Okan Awa: Cânticos da Tradição Yorubá is a collection of traditional Yoruban songs set to orchestral arrangments and sung by soprano, dancer, and Ph.D. Inaicyra Falcão dos Santos. Inaicyra is daughter of noted Mestre Didi Axipá (Deoscóredes Maximiliano dos Santos), a candomblé priest (of the Egungun on the island of Itaparica) who in his writings and art explored Nagô traditions in Bahia.  She is also a great-great-granddaughter of Marcelina da Silva -- Obá Tossi -- captured in the Oyá region of Africa and brought to Bahia where she would eventually become a founder and high-priestess of house of candomblé Casa Branca.