The Tincoãs...Hot Buttered Soul...Straight Outta Cachoeira!

Chula, Ijexá, Samba de Caboclo, Ilú, Coco, Baião, Alujá, Agueré, Jiká, Awõ, Sató, Opanijé, Vassi, Avaninha, Ramunha, Igbi, Paó, Batá

LISTEN!

Radio Cana Brava...internet radio from Salvador da Bahia...is an aural rainbow stretching from Bahia's sweet fields of sugarcane in the land where samba was born (in the hands, mouths, hips and hearts of the Bantus), to the hills of Rio de Janeiro where samba-de-morro was composed for radio stars by wonderfully talented men who themselves were relegated to living in the favelas.

The rainbow arcs over Rio's district of Lapa, haunt of such slight giants as Cartola and Noel Rosa...over Praça Onze where Pixinguinha and Donga and friends gathered in the house of Tia Ciata for their choros while the candomblés and sambas-de-roda were conducted out back, away from the eyes of the police. It arcs over Maranhão in the north, Paraíba and Pernambuco, Minas Gerais to the south, over São Paulo's Praça da Independência where samba is tapped out by shoeshiners on shoe polish can lids (samba professors to wonderful Germano Mathias), over the jongeiros of the Vale do Paraíba...

The rainbow is hued with the dust of the sertão (backlands) and imbued with the sophisticated dance moves of the gafieiras, Rio dance halls of the 1930's. It resonates with the agogô, the bandolim (mandolin), and the seven-stringed guitar utilized in samba and choro...

We are not smooth jazz. We are not easy-listening bossa nova. We are not psychedelia-influenced tropicália (too much hippie-dippie "freedom" being the antithesis of preternaturally tight Brazilian percussion). We are not Bahia Carnival-frothpop (in spite of living right in the middle of it). We are not fake Bahia tribal roots (which for some reason seems to attract so much attention from foreign journalists).

This is the rich soaring sound of the real Brasil.

Cana Brava Records

We webcast out of Cana Brava Records, on Rua João de Deus 22, Pelourinho, Salvador da Bahia, Brasil, where selections are chosen from both stock and our out-of-print selection.

I'll try to answer questions, particularly with respect to musicians I know personally here in Bahia (I'm not an expert, just a fan!).

canabrava@bahia-online.net

We are also setting up to act as management/agents for a number of magnificent Brazilian musicians, and soon will present our quite impressive (if you're into great music) roster!

* The previous "radio" had close to a couple of thousand songs on it. It's been re-done to eliminate the need for signing up and listening to stupid commercials via the service I was paying for in order to have everything "legitimate" (part of that legitimacy was conforming to idiotic rules with respect to how many cuts per artist or release could be played per hour, rules which don't apply to terrestrial radio programming which, as everybody knows, does everything to death; who comes up with this s**t?!).

Now it's just click and listen. The list is shuffled at random when the player is opened, and clicking on the red "exploding star" will put everything in order by artist (clicking again puts the songs into random order, and the order may be randomly re-set as often as one desires. One may also click anywhere on the list and listen. The system is massively better like this (despite the um...rule bending)! Lots more on the way!

I'm also going to begin a series of short bios of musicians, songwriters and players featured on the "radio", beginning with the great and largely unknown ones...

Cana Brava Records in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil

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, per which, below, is the trailer to Finnish-born Salvador resident Mika Kaurismäki's 2005 choro documentary, Brasileirinho).

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...

Our Own Short History of Brazilian Music

Notes on current Bahian music and how it got to be this way...

A new way to find and/or propagate great music. If you're a musician or music lover, join up! Join these guys! Fast, free, fabulous!