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Brazilian music is deep, there's no question about that! And while musical depth is not unique to Brazil, Brazil's harnessing of depth and warmth to complex and sophisticated rhythms makes it a source of enormous richness to a people -- including many musicians -- who don't have such richness in a more material sense.
 Pixinguinha |
Cana Brava Records was founded as an outlet for the music of Bahia and Brazil's Nordeste (Northeast, an ethnographic entity unto its own, defined by hardship and spirited resilience), and as an outlet for hard-to-find music in Salvador (while making room for Brazil's consecrated artists, Cartola, Jobim, et al, and styles ranging from the sambas of Rio's morros - hills - to choro - "cry", a style which gave birth some of Brazil's most beautiful compositions and most extraordinary instrumentalists).
Listen to Pixinguinha's Choro "Carinhoso",
played by Zé da Velha, Silvério Pontes, & Amigos"
It isn't just a shop, it's a nexus (see Luciano Calazans above, or better yet, hear Luciano Calazans above playing his composition Uma Tarde no Sertão - An Afternoon in the Backlands), and we are actively working to produce and promote some of the world's most moving music.
Hamlet said: "I could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams." The dreams of the composers, singers, and instrumentalists beneath our arches pulse and soar through space and time, extending our shop beyond its walls to the plantations beyond the bay, to the backlands, to the terreiros de candomblé, to the hills ringing Guanabara*, to the gafieiras (dancehalls) of 1930s Lapa, the Ipanema of the 1950s and 60s...
Our shop is small, but it encompasses a universe!
Where we're located in Pelourinho...
We also make CDs available via post...
 The Man from the Morro |
* Guanabara (visible in the large photo below) is the bay around which is situated the city of Rio de Janeiro ...the poorer inhabitants living up in the surrounding morros -- or hills -- where the less desirable real-estate was, and is, located. These hills were the source of the samba (hence samba-de-morro) which would become popularized on Brazilian radio, and one songwriter from the morro of Mangueira, a man sought out by both Leopold Stokowski and Heitor Villa-Lobos, a songwriter who was recorded by Brazil's biggest stars of the time (including Francisco Alves and Carmen Miranda), was Cartola.
Despite his acclaim, Cartola never made much money (that was left for the performers, broadcasters and record companies). He dropped out of site in the late '40s and it was in a bar in Ipanema sometime in the '50s that a journalist noticed a broken-down looking man with missing teeth step up and order a cachaça (Brazilian rum). The journalist turned to the man asking "Would I by any chance be standing face to face with the great composer Cartola?" "The Great Composer" had been around the corner, washing cars.
Here, in his own voice (on the first record he ever recorded himself), is the song of a man who'd endured much, and who in the manner of an oyster protecting itself by the creation of a pearl (which is what Brazilian music is at its base after all), prevailed to write songs like
O Sol Nascerá (The Sun Will Rise)
Guanabara in the distance; Cartola was born in the neighborhood of Catete, from where the photo above was taken.
Samba became the quintessential musical soul of Rio, but
The National Music of Brazil
...was born in Bahia, on the sugarcane plantations of the Recôncavo, the fertile, concave-shaped region around the Baia de Todos os Santos (Bay of All Saints). Hence our logo depicting a cortador de cana (sugarcane cutter).
This proto-samba is analogous to the delta blues in the United States, but unlike the blues, which is played, sung and storied, Bahian chula (nowadays often referred to as samba-de-roda) is a dying art played by groups of mostly older practitioners in backwater little towns, and by a handful of professional musicians.
One of the great samba songs of Rio implores "Não deixe o samba morrer!" (Don't let the samba die!"). Truth be told, that's not likely to happen anytime soon. Samba is absolutely flourishing in Brazil. But what kind of florescence lives on and thrives when its roots are dead and gone? That would be a sad thing, the world losing a beautiful and important part of its cultural heritage. Não deixe a chula morrer.
More on chula and other Bahian regional music!
Bahian samba is profoundly linked with the Afro-Bahian religion of candomblé, and one group -- from the town of Cachoeira, Bahia -- which mined the riches of candomblé for secular music was Os Tincoãs.
Unfortunately their records are out of print, BUT, we are in contact with EMI about re-releasing their release of 1973 (from which the selection immediately above was taken). Powerful! (And by the way, Mateus Aleluia, last of the Tincoãs and their principal songwriter, was raised within the fold of the Ventura house of candomblé -- of the Gêge nation -- just outside of Cachoeira.)
I'm often asked about the name "Cana Brava". The source is an imaginary record shop (based on Sikhulu's Record Shack on Harlem's 125th Street in New York City) in the screenplay THIS DANCE CAN KILL. Joe (the immigrant father) is conversing with his American-born son Zoom (from "Zumbi", a name the kid, in his desire to be All-American, had long rejected). Zoom asks where the name Cana Brava came from (the relevant exchange is on page 109)...
JOE (cont'd) |
Son... We're making a new start. We're gonna be real partners now. Cana Brava is a heavy name. Maybe you got another idea... |
ZOOM |
| What's so heavy about it? |
JOE |
It's a lie... |
ZOOM |
Why'd you decide to use it? |
JOE |
I was takin' back what was ours... |
| Zoom's looking at his father... |
ZOOM |
Then we're keepin' it. |
The entire script (a Cana Brava original work) is here.
With João do Boi of Samba Chula de São Braz, per the film clip above
