Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Alexandre Pires’s fans
Would Bush invite Guinga?
News has swept the virtual grapevine that Alexandre Pires will entertain George Bush at the White House. While this doesn’t reflect well on the President?s taste (no one has ever accused him of being a highbrow), apparently it does wonders for the singer’s prestige (I wonder why).
The brouhaha has even hit my humble website Musica Brasiliensis, where the following rather persistent search took place this morning:
1. haleandro peresh
2. haleandro peres
3. +haleandro +peresh
4. “haleandro peresh”
5. aleandro peres
With fans like this, who needs...?
I’m taking a break from disc reviewing while I complete another pet project, Berkeley Landmarks.
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09:19
 
Tuesday, September 23, 2003
Praça Onze in popular song, part 9
Back to the beginning.
Bahiano
Dijalma M. Candido is an erstwhile collector of rarities in 78 rpm and a valuable contributor to this modest publishing effort. He is also the winner of our September 11 Survivors contest (unlike many who were caught napping in the face of momentous news, Dijalma is ever alert).
The other day he sent me a scratchy old recording of a song that was likely the first ever to mention Praça Onze on disc.
Título: Não Empurre
Gênero: Canconeta
Intérprete: Bahiano
Gravadora: Odeon
Número: 108527
The disc, released in 1911 or 1912, offers the third recording of “Não Empurre.” Two earlier versions were released on the Zon-O-Phone label (nos. 10005 and X-532, respectively) a decade or so before. The first, from 1902, was in effect the fifth Brazilian record ever released. The second has no date but could have been a second edition of the same recording.
“Não Empurre” is a rather lewd story that takes place in the Cidade Nova, including an eventful bonde ride. It begins:
Tomei o bonde da Carris Urbanos,
Desses que vão até a Praça Onze
Mas a meu lado, dois olhos maganos
Me perguntaram se eu era de bronze.
Então, para provar que eu não era,
Quis eu logo fazer coisa limpa,
Pois eu nessas coisas sou cuera,
Sou mesmo supimpa.
Then the narrator relates how, when the bonde turned a corner, he contrived to fall on the young woman by his side. She naturally complained, in double entendre that would make even a malandro blush:
Não empurre, não empurre
Seu Manduca,
Vê que assim me remói,
Não empurre, não empurre
Que machuca,
Não empurre assim que dói...
Dijalma notes that this type of almost-pornographic canconeta was a staple of Casa Edison’s repertoire in the early years of the 20th century. Whoever heard Mário Pinheiro’s recordings of “A Boceta de Rapé” or “Pela Porta de Detrás” would not hesitate to agree with this assessment.
More on this and other early songs can be found in Praça Onze in Popular Song, Pt. 1.
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11:20
Saturday, September 20, 2003
Marcos Sacramento’s new disc
Biscoito Fino will release Marcos Sacramento’s latest CD, produced by the French Association Saravá. Recorded in Rio during July and August, the disc will be released on 12 October. As Marcos Sacramento will be on tour in France from October through December, his Rio release concert will take place next February.
The repertoire comprises classic sambas and sambas-canção from the Golden Age, originally recorded by Carmen Miranda (#1, 5, 13a), Orlando Silva (2, 11, 13b), Aracy de Almeida (4, 7, 8, 9), Mario Reis (#3), Moreira da Silva (#6), Silvio Caldas (#12), and Roberto Silva (#10).
Memorável Samba
(Saravá/Biscoito Fino)
01. Deixa Falar (Nelson Petersen, 1938)
02. Meu Romance (J. Cascata, 1938)
03. Mulato Bamba (Noel Rosa, 1932)
04. O “X” do Problema (Noel Rosa, 1936)
05. Meu Rádio e Meu Mulato (Herivelto Martins, 1938)
06. Esta Noite Eu Tive um Sonho (Wilson Batista/Moreira da Silva, 1941)
07. Fez Bobagem (Assis Valente, 1942)
08. Triste Cuíca (Noel Rosa/Hervê Cordovil, 1935)
09. Só Pode Ser Você (Noel Rosa/Osvaldo Gogliano “Vadico,” 1936)
10. Notícia (Nelson Cavaquinho/Alcides Caminha/Norival Bahia, 1954)
11. Errei, Erramos (Ataulfo Alves, 1938)
12. Onde Está a Florisbela? (Geraldo Pereira/Ary Monteiro, 1944)
13. Imperador do Samba (Waldemar Silva, 1937)
Deusa do Cassino (Newton Teixeira/Torres Homem, 1938)
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08:50
Thursday, September 18, 2003
The Nothing Doing Bar
Engraving by Dufy
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16:41
Thursday, September 11, 2003
How the press misleads the press
A letter to the editor of Tribuna da Imprensa.
I was nonplussed to read the comments of Carlos Dantas in Tribuna da Imprensa about Tom Cardoso’s Veredas article ?Um boi no telhado?:
Praising what he considers to be excellent journalism, Dantas observes:
Mas a matéria que Tom Cardoso escreveu para “Veredas” deste mês reporta-nos a vários outros lances de “O boi no telhado”; a reação que a composição provocou em nosso meio, as pesquisas levadas a efeito pelo mestre Aloysio de Alencar Pinto em companhia de Manuel Aranha Correa do Lago, o encontro pouco afável entre Villa-Lobos e Milhaud — enfim um punhado significativo e clarificador desta curiosa e culturalmente proveitosa passagem do francês Milhaud neste nosso País tropical...
First, everything that Tom Cardoso published in Veredas (and much more besides) had already been available on the Web in the series The Boeuf Chronicles and its Portuguese edition As Crônicas Bovinas.
Second, what Dantas describes as “o encontro pouco afável entre Villa-Lobos e Milhaud” is based solely on the following passage from Cardoso’s article:
Apesar dos encontros em Paris, Milhaud e Villa-Lobos, ao contrário do que a história registra, não tiveram um relacionamento muito cordial. Numa entrevista a um repórter francês, o maestro brasileiro foi categórico ao dar sua opinião sobre Milhaud: “Ele copia, ele edita Tupinambá”.
Cardoso obtained the Villa-Lobos quotation from Part 11 of the Boeuf Chronicles, in which I reproduced a passage from História da Música by Dr. Ulisses Paranhos:
A melodia cabocla de Marcelo Tupinambá fez um sucesso enorme na Europa nos concertos de Villa-Lobos. A esse nosso músico, um crítico parisiense perguntou se o compositor modernista francês Darius Milhaud, vivendo alguns anos no Brasil, não se teria inspirado em Tupinambá. Villa-Lobos, assomadamente, respondeu: “Ele copia, êle edita Tupinambá.”
In other words, the character and tenor of an entire relationship between two major composers was imagined on the basis of a five-word quotation.
Cardoso left out two crucial points that would have presented a more complete picture of reality:
1. Whenever Milhaud mentioned Villa-Lobos in writing, it was always in a very positive light. For example, in his autobiography, Milhaud wrote this about meeting Villa-Lobos in Rio:
I had also met a young cellist who played in a movie theater to earn his living; I went to his house and he showed me his first compositions. This man was Heitor Villa-Lobos. I met him again later in Paris. He was amongst the group who gathered on Thursdays at Florent Schmitt’s house in Saint Cloud, and Villa-Lobos himself invited his friends on Sundays to his apartment on the Place Saint Michel. The list of his works is tremendous. His romantic character addresses itself to every source: Portuguese, negro and Indian. Did he not even tell me that when traveling in the Amazon in search of Indian folklore he had found some themes which the Indians themselves had forgotten but that the parrots who live for two hundred years were still singing!
2. Villa-Lobos himself copied popular compositions without giving credit to their composers, including two also quoted by Milhaud in Le Boeuf sur le Toit. “Caboca di Caxangá” (João Pernambuco/Catulo da Paixão Cearense) is included in the Canções Típicas Brasileiras, while “Vamo Maruca, Vamo” (Juca Castro/Paixão Trindade) is quoted in the fourth movement (“Miudinho)” of the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4 and in the Guia Prático.
The above information was supplied to Cardoso, but he chose to ignore it.
Cardoso’s conclusion that Milhaud and Villa-Lobos were unfriendly to each other is based solely on a single quotation from an indirect source. Dantas perpetuates the myth exclusively on the strength of Cardoso’s assertion. I call both actions irresponsible journalism.
Daniella Thompson
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18:06
Survivors
Maybe, one of these days.
Donga
Tristeza (samba do morro de Cartola)
Cartola & pastoras da Mangueira
Afoché (candomblé de Zé Espinguela)
Zé Espinguela & Grupo do Pai Alufá
Samba do Urubu (variações de Pixinguinha)
Pixinguinha & conjunto regional de Donga
Apanhá Limão (samba de Jararaca)
Conjunto regional de Donga
Samba da Lua (batucada de Donga & David Nasser)
Conjunto regional de Donga
Quando uma Estrela Sorri (marcha-rancho de Donga, Villa-Lobos & David Nasser)
Conjunto regional de Donga
Primeiro Amor (samba do morro de Cartola & Aloísio Dias)
Cartola & pastoras da Mangueira
Meu Amor (samba do morro de Cartola & Aloísio Dias)
Cartola & pastoras da Mangueira
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13:03
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
O Tempo de Paulinho da Viola
Urariano Mota writes about the perfect sambista.
Digestivo Cultural columnist Urariano Mota, who hails from Olinda, Pernambuco, sent me his recent paean to Paulinho da Viola, whose documentary film ?Meu Tempo É Hoje? went into general release in late July. Urariano is on a mission to spread the word worldwide, and has already managed to insert it (in Portuguese) in Pravda and La Insignia, as well as (in Italian) in Musibrasil.net.
Rather than repeat what’s already up on four other websites (the World Wide Web has no borders), I direct interested readers with knowledge of Portuguese or Italian to any of the above or to the original article in Digestivo Cultural.
For the foreign language?challenged, here’s a list of 32 songs from the film’s soundtrack.
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11:49
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