Recommendation

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• rotch says:

  April 19, 2011 at 7:15 pm

  I won­der what new stuff have you been listen­ing to lately?

• Victor Morton says:

  April 19, 2011 at 8:31 pm

  On the sub­ject of Brazil pop, has any­one else seen BEYOND IPANEMA, a doc­u­ment­ary that I saw at the end if the 2010 DC Film Festival? Can’t say *I* was impressed, but …

• Victor Morton says:

  April 19, 2011 at 8:39 pm

  Actually here’s what I wrote about BEYOND IPANEMA and which has been sit­ting in my Draft folder for a year:
  BEYOND IPANEMA (Guto Barra, Brazil) — 3
  Even stip­u­lat­ing that BEYOND IPANEMA is merely try­ing to be a Brazilian Music 101 inform­a­tion doc­u­ment­ary and so should be judged on those lim­ited terms, it still isn’t very good. For one thing, it really looks too much like ama­teur­ish video, and though the video projection-system used may be at fault, even on 35mm Technicolor cel­lu­loid, the fre­quent use of explan­at­ory big-font title cards would still scream “cheesy.” And for anoth­er, I only cared for some of the music – the jazz, samba and bossa nova mater­i­al (the most inter­est­ing seg­ment involved a Harlem high school whose band spe­cial­izes in the com­plex samba beats and rhythms). But a great­er amount of the music was from con­tem­por­ary genres I simply can­’t stand as creativity-less tech­no­lo­gic­al noise – electronic/dee-jay/hiphop remixes that get praised as rep­res­ent­ing “mashup” aes­thet­ics, which I cer­tainly would not deny they do but a point I con­sider a question-beg. (And get off my lawn!!!)
  But I would have been dis­ap­poin­ted in this even if it were just a VH1-MTV edu­ma­ca­tion­al spe­cial, and it really made me appre­ci­ate more a film like YOUSSOU NDOUR: I BRING WHAT I LOVE (which I saw at Toronto in 2008 and I then called “a super­i­or example of the genre”). While I had my doubts about the NDOUR film’s through-line nar­rat­ive, at least it had one, which gave the film a form, a focus and some ten­sion. IPANEMA nev­er man­ages that, mostly fol­low­ing a vague chro­no­logy that even l’il ol me, no expert on Brazilian music, could tell was skip­ping a lot and/or con­cen­trat­ing way too much on the present. We go from Carmen Miranda to Tropicalia and from there almost to the present day, where the film stays for most of its run­ning time, though there is some back­track­ing to pick up sev­er­al Brazilian genres’ world pop­ular­ity and obvi­ous impact on 60s jazz. BEYOND IPANEMA picks up every sub­genre and trend in the last 10 or 15 years with an “and then there’s this group and then there’s that sing­er, and here’s this record shop” whirl of unsor­ted clips. And there’s too much “home team” cheer­ing about impact and import­ance (e.g., two dozen people in a single-aisle record store gets called a “con­cert,” and the Top 5 Grammy-winning US hit from which the film derives its title gets called one of the biggest hits ever). We feel like we’re see­ing the public-relations recruit­ing film of a “Mad Men”-like eager beaver juni­or exec­ut­ive who landed the Brazil Music account.

• Phil Freeman says:

  April 19, 2011 at 9:50 pm

  I have just nev­er been able to get into Brazilian music, with the excep­tion of the rock sound of the Pernambuco region (the band to hear is Naçao Zumbi) and some early Sepultura. Samba and bossa nova do abso­lutely noth­ing for me. You can ima­gine what a huge prob­lem this was when I was edit­ing the world music magazine Global Rhythm from 2005–2007. Every time we ran a fea­ture on a Brazilian artist, which was often ’cause that’s one of the biggest sub­sets of the whole world music realm, you could hear me cringing and mut­ter­ing from across the office.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  April 19, 2011 at 10:44 pm

  @ Victor: I did­n’t see the film but giv­en your descrip­tion it sounds like a real missed opportunity.
  @ rotch: In terms of rock/pop, I’m still enjoy­ing the latest PJ Harvey, Gruff Rhys’ “Hotel Shampoo,” the new Smith Westerns, new Go! Team, The Dum Dum Girls EP, new Earth, new Edwyn Collins, Faust’s “Something Dirty” (real honey badger stuff), that James Blake feller, that kinda thing. In terms of jazz and “new” music, lotsa good new Laswell (and Praxis!) and Zorn stuff out, some stuff by trum­peter Peter Evans, Mostly Other People Do The Killing’s latest, a trio disc with Evans, Mary Halvorson, and Weasel Walter, anoth­er trio with Walter, Henry Kaiser and Charles K. Noyes…etc. Everything recently released by Otomo Yoshihide is aces too. On tap to listen to: New Low, debut of Jonny (that group with the guys from Teenage Fanclub and Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci), new Black Devil Disco Club, duo record by Matthew Shipp and Darius Jones.

• Kevyn Knox says:

  April 19, 2011 at 11:13 pm

  We should have prob­ably heard more of this stuff in the visu­ally stun­ning but aud­ibly lackluster Rio!

• jbryant says:

  April 20, 2011 at 1:51 pm

  When I was a kid I once bought a bag of 45s at a depart­ment store. The bag was see-thru plastic and held about 10 records, I think. You did­n’t know what you were get­ting, except for the records on the top and bot­tom of the stack. I think I bought it because Jr. Walker and the All-Stars “Shoot Your Shot” was on top. But it also con­tained the Sergio Mendes ver­sion of “Mas, Que Nada,” which quickly became a fave among me and my siblings.
  I’m def­in­itely a bossa nova dilet­tante, but have always wanted to explore more. I have a sol­id Jobim com­pil­a­tion and the Jobim-Sinatra collaboration.
  The only oth­er Brazilian artists in my col­lec­tion are Bebel Gilberto and the amaz­ing Caetano Veloso (a Best of, which I’m sure only scratches the sur­face of his genius).

• Jimmy says:

  April 20, 2011 at 3:00 pm

  Just get­ting a little taste of the samples @ Amazon. Love this stuff.
  No ques­tion about how music such as this has the abil­ity lift one’s spirit.
  Cool art­work too.
  Thanks for the recommendation.

• Jimmy says:

  April 20, 2011 at 3:17 pm

  to lift, as in to lift one’s spirit.

• md'a says:

  April 20, 2011 at 3:21 pm

  Ah, yes, Jorge Ben. One of the many music­al artists I’ve dis­covered via le cinema. Went straight to Tower Records back in the ’80s after see­ing this anim­ated short:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKV9k2ZpEc8

• JP says:

  April 20, 2011 at 3:55 pm

  Anyone inter­ested in Brazilian music should pick up the Tropicalia Compilation. Essential music from the likes of Jorge Ben, Os mutantes, Gal Costa and Tom Ze. A great book­let comes with it about the move­ment of Tropicalia.

• Paul says:

  April 21, 2011 at 7:36 am

  Glenn, I’ve been groov­ing on this com­pil­a­tion for weeks. May I recom­mend anoth­er Soul Jazz Bossa Nova comp, “Brazil Bossa Beat,” which comes with even more cool cov­er art and extens­ive notes? Right now it looks like you can only order it here: http://www.forcedexposure.com/bin/search.pl?search_string=SJR+242CD&searchfield=exkeyword but I’m sure Other Music has copies.

• James Keepnews says:

  April 21, 2011 at 12:39 pm

  Wow, the Walter/Kaiser/Noyes is a new one to me, sounds great on blog paper – freak­ing Bruce at DMG has to put me back on that new releases mail­ing list! No ques­tion, the new Peter Evans date Ghosts is one of the damned­est things I’ve heard in some time. He’s such a vir­tu­oso he could con­ceiv­ably coast on chops for a life­time but it’s those lys­er­gic­ally flu­id com­pos­i­tion­al struc­tures that melt before your ears that impress me most on this disc – not exactly head-solos-head, but it is, kinda, but it’s more “Jesus, am I hear­ing that right?” at count­less points along the way. Much like the Blue Series Thirsty Ear dates like Junk Magic, Nu Bop, Pentagon, The Shell Game, &c. a dec­ade ago, Ghosts is an instant classic.
  And per the Blue Series’ cur­at­or Mr. Shipp, get­ting his and Mr. Jones’ date is all a mat­ter of when, not if. I’ll prob­ably buy it from the man him­self at his con­cert next week­end up here in Cold Spring – not that I’d ever try to use your blog to let people know about the Matthew Shipp Trio gig on Sat. April 30^th at 7:30 PM at Cold Spring’s acous­tic­ally sub­lime Chapel of Our Lady Restoration. Gracious, no, I’d nev­er try to do that. What kind of troll do you take me for? Erk, um, maybe don’t answer that… :}

• Mark Slutsky says:

  April 22, 2011 at 1:15 am

  This is a great comp and the oth­er one Soul Jazz just put out is great too. Brazilian music is end­lessly mine-able; it’s a whole oth­er America’s worth.