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PrintSince "The Girl From Ipanema" won a Grammy in 1965 for the version performed by Astrud and Joao Gilberto, Brazilian popular music has shifted in and out of the public consciousness. As the tropicalismo craze mounted in the '90s, aficionados have become familiar Stateside with Caetano Veloso, Tom Ze, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Gilberto Gil.
- Where: Your Inner Vagabond Coffeehouse, 4130 Butler St., Lawrenceville.
- When: 9 p.m. Saturday.
- Ticktets: $10; BYOB. 412-683-1623.
And who doesn't recognize the sinuous rhythm of the samba? But it's the latest crop of Brazilian singers, such as Cleveland-based Luca Mundaca, who might have the final say in dragging their native sounds into the American culture once and for all. Born in Chile, Mundaca grew up in the countryside suburb of Sao Paulo called Valinhos. Despite the middle-class surface similarities, she experienced a different kind of childhood than an American teen. "We have less issues about sexuality and about freedom of expression in music and movies and soap operas [than in the United States]," she explains. "More kids are so used to seeing a scantily clad body of a man or a woman, so people don't even care. When a boy sees a girl like that on the beach in Rio, he will pass through like it's nothing scandalous. In Brazil, it's about the innocence of enjoying life, without any of that other stuff."
Even so, Mundaca took her time exploring her own love for her country's music, explaining that the power of song caught her "by surprise" one night at a teenage party where she heard a guitarist friend play -- of all things -- the introduction to Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven." And it wasn't until around the age of 23 that she discovered bossa nova for the first time. "[Previously] I would only hear music from the radio, which was rock or pop."
Mundaca learned about the collaborative team of musician Toquinho (a k a Antonio Pecci Filho) and lyricist Vincius Moraes (who wrote the "Ipanema" words), who were creative around the same time as Jobim. And her voice has been compared to female icons such as MPB (Musica Popular Brasileira) singer Marisa Monte, who has worked with David Byrne and Laurie Anderson. Yet she remained focused on her own art.
"I don't have this need to be anxious to check out this musician or that musician," she says. "I admire very much all of these artists, but I'm always trying to listen more to the universe. I feel very connected to nature, for example, with the sky and the stars -- things that I can look at instead of hear, and they give me the energy that makes me write. Rather than what's playing on the radio, I'm more interested in life and what's going on around me."
World music circles in the United States have taken an interest in Mundaca.
Last year, she won an international songwriting competition in the "world fusion" category for her song "Ha Dias," which later was included on the Putumayo Records compilation "Brazilian Lounge." Some benefits of winning that prize included a feature article in the Musician's Atlas and promotion to more than 200 college radio stations.
Putumayo's placement in upscale chain bookstores and retail centers (such as Whole Foods) brought her a whole new audience, on which she capitalized with a tour of the West Coast and Canada.
Mundaca has built on her Putumayo fame with a CD called "Day By Day," released by the Ohio label Lumeni Productions. On it, she performs with a group of talented session musicians from Sao Paulo, even though on tour she appears solo with only her voice and acoustic guitar ("you could have great musicians, but it's so hard to deal with the egos -- it stresses me out"). The most immediately appealing track, "Berenguendem" (a reference to a flashy, stylish woman from Bahia), lays on the thickest Brazilian style, even rattling off terms from the culture ("samba, batucada, berimbau, candomble") and inventing a term that Mundaca might use to describe her own music -- "oxoxo" (pronounced "oshosho").
"That's a word I just made up," she explains, "for when you are singing and you need something melodic to say."
The other selections on "Day By Day" vary from straight-up bossa nova ("Ha Dias") to swinging lounge jazz ("Nao Se Apavore"), from liquid funk ("Cidades") to a mellow alt-rock vibe not too far away from Sheryl Crow or Natalie Merchant. "Minha Flor" finishes the disc with what sounds like a somewhat stilted English translation of Portuguese lyrics, but she doesn't restrict herself to any genre, preferring to follow her instincts. "I have at least 200 songs, so whatever comes to me and I feel in my heart, that's what I'm going to be playing in my show."
Mundaca firmly believes that her music and the sounds of Brazil are bound for greater mass acceptance as the world gets smaller. "More people are getting not only Brazilian music, but also world music. The new generation of Brazilian musicians are mixing bossa nova with electronics, [and] every day we have a new artist who is doing something successful. I think it has the potential to stay up there with pop and reggae."
"Brazilian music is a wild flower that you can't control. You keep it your yard, and it keeps popping up more and more. It's time for it to stick around and never go away."
