The Cane-Cutter on Rua João de Deus
We ship CDs directly from our shop here in Brazil. I'm in the process of putting stock online, and this section will grow and become automated and divided by musical styles, etc. But, in the meantime it's a mom-and-pop store and I'm the pop and I'm simply going to start with the stuff I love...
 David Byrne arrastando os pés! |
Alternatively, if you'd rather go with David Byrne's taste rather than my own, here is a link to the January, 2009 radio section of his site, the playlist for which included music he picked up here at Cana Brava. "The guy in the CD store" is me. Hey David! You're pretty great yourself! (Who else has done as much as David Byrne for the dissemination of Brazilian music -- and many other styles of music as well -- throughout the United States and Europe? And he's done it and does it out of genuine love and generosity of spirit. Ele é o cara!)
Those CDs and the stories behind them will be up over the next couple of days. Here's a start.
The samples here run 1 minute and 45 seconds at 128 kbps (good quality so you can actually hear what the discs sound like). They are usually the first four songs of the CD, but in some cases I cherry-pick to include songs I like.
Quatro Grandes do Samba
(Four Samba Greats)
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This is one of the greatest samba records of all time -- samba de raiz (roots samba) -- recorded in 1977 and featuring four (count 'em, four!) greats, Nelson Cavaquinho, Candeia, Guilherme de Brito, and Elton Medeiros.
Nelson Cavaquinho sits at the top of the samba pantheon, a composer whose songs were recorded by the radio stars of Brazil's "Golden Age" but who until the end of his life never got any recognition. He and his songwriting partner Guilherme de Brito hung out the lowest class bars in Lapa (a Rio neighborhood), composing and playing their beautiful songs for the bums, prostitutes, and neerdowells (would that I had been one of those neerdowells!).
Candeia was a truculent policeman, until the day he was shot in the back and consigned to a wheelchair for the rest of his life, thereafter producing sambas of a rare and spiritual beauty.
Elton Medeiros is a singer/songwriter from the Portela samba school. His rich oeuvre includes songs written in partnership with the immortal Cartola.
Price: US$14 or €10.
If you're interested in purchasing this CD from us, please click here!
Songlist
01. Não Vem
02. Sem Ilusão
03. Notícia
04. A Flor e o Espinho, Quando Eu Me Chamar Saudade
05. Amor Perfeito
06. Gotas de Luar
07. Sou Mais o Samba
08. A Vida
09. Não é Só Você
10. Cove e Não Molha
11. Expressão do Teu Olhar
12. Rita Maloca
Magnificent Music from the Man from Mango Hill
Cartola
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Nelson Cavaquinho knew something about samba
When Muhammad Ali was asked if he was really "The Greatest", he replied no, Joe Louis was. When Nelson Cavaquino was asked the same thing he replied no, Cartola was. In Brazil Cartola isn't simply "Cartola", he's "The Divine Cartola", but the road to his sanctification was a difficult one, and he almost never made it...
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Cartola was a founder of the Mangueira Samba School (Mangueira is a favela in Rio; its samba school one of Rio's most storied). It was he who chose Mangueira's mythic colors -- green and pink -- the colors of the mangas rosas (pink mangoes) hanging amidst the green leaves of the mango trees which gave the neighborhood (albeit indirectly) its name. When the colors were criticised as an inelegant combination, rather than point out the obvious, he said that pink was for love and green was for hope, and how could love and hope not go well together?
As a boy Angenor de Oliveira worked construction, wearing a bowler derby -- a cartola -- to keep his hair from getting dirty. He composed Mangueira's first samba enredo (marching samba), and he went on to write scores of most-highly-regarded songs (art songs, really), a number of which were recorded by Brazil's best-known recording artists of the time (including Carmen Miranda). He was also tapped by Villa-Lobos for a recording by Leopold Stokowski, Native Brazilian Music. The composer never made any money to speak of, and in the 1940's he dropped out of site, most people assuming he was dead.
Genius in search of Genius
 Sérgio Porto |
In 1956 journalist Sérgio Porto (he often published under the pseudonym "Stanislaw Ponte Preta") was having a cafezinho in a bar in Ipanema when a grizzled man with missing teeth walked up to the bar and ordered a cachaça. Sr. Preta gathered himself up and asked if by any chance he was standing face-to-face with the great composer Cartola -- and the reply was in the affirmative. Cartola had been washing cars nearby and taken a break for fortification.
 Cartola & Dona Zica |
Cartola's "rediscovery" led to another opening up of his compositions, and in addition to his own recordings of his work he has been recorded by Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Paulinho da Viola, Beth Carvalho, Clara Nunes, Clementina de Jesus, Elis Regina, Marisa Monte, Mart'nália, Francis Hime, Elizeth Cardoso, Raphael Rabello, Marco Pereira, and many others. From 1963 to 1965 Cartola owned and operated a nightclub devoted to samba, Zicartola (the name combining his with that of his wife "Zica", who ran the kitchen). Forgotten sambistas were brought back to the public and new ones introduced (Paulinho da Viola first performed there...his first earnings were the bus fare he couldn't afford).
Cartola died in 1980.
He prevailed in the end...
This is Cartola's first album, recorded when he was 66 years old. Samba-Choro.com.br considers his second album to be the greatest samba record ever made, but in my opinion it is this one. These songs dig deeper and deeper into the soul every time they are listened to.
Price: US$14 or €10.
If you're interested in purchasing this CD from us, please click here!
Songlist
01. Disfarça e Chora
02. Sim
03. Corra e Olhe o Céu
04. Acontece
05. Tive Sim
06. O Sol Nascerá
07. Alvorada
08. Festa da Vinda
09. Quem
10. Cove e Não Molha
11. Expressão do Teu Olhar
12. Rita Maloca
Master of the Shoe Polish Can Lid
(or, the sambista in the porkpie hat)
Germano Mathias is a sentimental favorite of mine. He is also one of Gilberto Gil's, which is why Sr. Gil released a record with him back in 1978. That's not the record of discussion right now though, the honor for this going to a recording of songs written and/or performed by a sentimental favorite of Sr. Mathias himself, a record entitled "A Tribute to Caco Velho".
Caco Velho is literally a fragment of old glass or pottery, but it's often used to mean a washed up old person. This was its meaning in a song by Ary Barroso in which the great composer (you know, the guy who wrote the music that was used as the theme to the 1985 movie Brazil) treated a sambista whose years of being a tough-guy ladies man were past. Nine-year-old Matheus Nunes, back in 1928, sold cigarettes and candy from a portable table at the Bar Florida in Porto Alegre, and he loved this song, singing it at his table there, tapping out the rhythm on a matchbox. The band leader divined a certain spark to the boy's impromptu performances, and one propitious night he called the embarrassed boy up to the stage to perform the song, which the boy sang to the delight of the audience, which of course immediately christened him "Caco Velho". The boy detested the name.
He eventually came around though, accepting the inevitable, becoming Caco Velho to the nightworld of Brazilian music.
Caco Velho with Amalia Rodrigues, the Portuguese "Queen of Fado"
Germano learned his samba in São Paulo's Praça da Sé, with the shoeshiners. His specialty is tapping out sambas on a shoe polish can lid (he was also a treacherous dancer -- see below -- and he still has plenty of swing and spring left in the old legs). In the clip above Germano goes back to his roots with the shoeshiners, guys who'll shine your shoes right now if you're there in the park. His style is samba sincopado, wherein the timing of the singing and the relation of the vocal phrasing to the percussion rhythm is all-important (Geraldo Pereira, Jackson do Pandeiro, and Caco Velho were masters of this).
Wicked!
In 1955 Caco Velho was leaving his program at Rádio Tupi in São Paulo and there was a contest to see who would replace him. Out of three-hundred contestants, German Mathias (who else?!) was selected and assumed the mantle. Fifty years later, this is Germano's homage to his master.
Tributo à Caco Velho is samba sincopado at it's finest, by one the form's last masters. It was recorded in 2004.
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Price: US$14 or €10.
If you're interested in purchasing this CD from us, please click here!
Songlist
01. Meu Fraco é Mulher
02. Uma Crioula
03. Barriga Vazia
04. Por um Beijo Teu
05. Tempo Feliz
06. Que Baixo
07. Samba do Meu Tio
08. Onde Está
09. Vida Dura
10. Alegria de Pobre
11. Moleque Vagabundo
12. Tonalidade Original
13. Nega Velha
14. A Palhaçada
The Lady Climbs the Hill
Eilzete at the bottom
The "lady" is Elizete Cardoso, a voice that many Brazilophiles will have heard in Manhã de Carnaval, the haunting theme to Orfeu Negro, Black Orfeus.
And the hills were the poverty-stricken places (they still are) where most of Rio's sambistas lived, and by extension where the writers of Rio's sambas lived. On Elizete Sobe o Morro (Elizete Climbs the Hill) Elizete sings the works of Nelson Cavaquinho, Zé Keti, Nelson Sargento, Elton Medeiros, Paulinho da Viola, Cartola, and other greats.
The album preserves the "real" samba sound (it was recorded in 1965), coming before the Tropicalistas decided that Brazil's music needed to be brought up to date (amazing how that "up to date" is now stuck back in the '60s, while the "outdated" stuff is now timeless).
The songs below (in the player) were written, respectively, by 1) Nelson Cavaquinho and Jair Costa, 2) Zé Keti, 3) Elton Medeiros and Hermímino Bello de Carvalho, and 4) Hermínio Bello de Carvalho, Elton Medeiros, and Paulinho da Viola.
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Price: US$14 or €10.
If you're interested in purchasing this CD from us, please click here!