/REPEATING/ /ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-BRAZIL: Rhythms and Musicians for Export

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 8 2000 (IPS) - Biá has lived in France since adolescence, but is constantly travelling throughout Europe, Canada, Japan and other countries, bringing the songs of Brazil to growing and increasingly diverse audiences.

Beatriz Regina Krieger, whose nickname Biá took on a French accent, is part of the legion of Brazilian singers and musicians who emigrated or who initiated their careers overseas, a product of the international success of their native land’s music.

Brazilian pop music today involves more foreign recording, distribution and media companies than national companies, complain many music critics, singers and composers.

Japan, despite the great cultural and geographical divide, is a major market for almost all of this Latin American country’s musical “ambassadors.”

Lisa Ono, born in Sao Paul of Japanese-Brazilian descent, won fame living and singing in the land of her ancestors, where she has recorded a dozen albums, mostly bossa nova, a genre that dominated the Brazilian music scene in the 1960s.

Only now will a small recording company distribute two of Ono’s records in Brazil.

A veteran composer and singer of the 1960s generation, Marcos Valle gives two concerts each year in Japan. Of his 38 records, 13 were recorded overseas, as other countries have proven to be his top market in recent years.

Joyce is another performer whose musical career means spending more time in foreign countries than in Brazil. Since the 1990s she has had annual concert tours in Japan, where her latest albums were also released, though she also has a strong following in the United States and Europe.

While these artists lament that they no longer have the fame in Brazil that they enjoyed in years past, the latest generation of young and unknown musicians are also jumping at the chance to launch – or at least boost – their careers in other countries.

Such is the case of Pedro Luís and his band Parede, of Bia Grabois and of Arícia Mess. All three released their first records in Japan.

But Biá’s story in France is typical of a generation that has developed its music while living outside of the “motherland.”

At 17, she interrupted her studies at the University of Sao Paulo’s School of Communication and Arts to leave with a group of fellow musicians for Europe, where they spread the gospel of Brazilian music, performing in bars, plazas, subway stations and other public spaces.

Biá’s friends then returned to Brazil, but she stayed in France, with the guitar she had learned to play as a young girl.

Today, at 33, her career has been established, with two albums in the music stores selling at a reasonable pace, after one received a national award in France. The singer is constantly on the road, however, touring other countries.

Biá began by performing basic interpretations of songs by Chico Buarque, and then she created French versions of the master’s famous music.

Biá now also sings songs she has composed herself. She has her own band, with her husband playing the flute and a drummer from Brazil, roots that seem to be indispensable for playing authentic Brazilian rhythms.

Monica Vasconcelos has had a similar experience, but in Great Britain. The young singer from Sao Paulo leads the band As Meninas, comprised of a Brazilian, a Briton and a German, as they play jazz interpretations of songs from Brazil.

This explosion of Brazilians performing, and in many cases living, more often outside than inside the country, is the result of more recording companies specialising in Brazilian music to keep up with growing world demand.

One example is Joe Davis, from Britain, who spent years visiting Brazil in search of new music to bring back to his home country.

In the United States, the production company Ziriguiboom reveals its specialisation in its name, a reference to ‘ziriguidum,’ the well-known sound of percussion at the Rio de Janeiro carnival.

One of the label’s singers is Bebel Gilberto, daughter of leading bossa nova singer, Joao Gilberto. She has lived in New York for the last nine years, and hopes her music will have repercussions back in Brazil.

“Brazil is a hit throughout the world,” Bebel Gilberto told the ‘Jornal do Brasil’ newspaper as she explained the success of her first album, “Tanto tempo” (So Much Time), in the United States, and the fame of her Brazilian colleagues in many other countries.

The bossa nova, a variation on samba with a great deal of jazz influence, is the driving force behind this world boom in Brazilian music. The Japanese apparently like its happy feel, expressed more calmly than the restless rhythms of original samba and of the Brazilian carnivals, Ono explains.

Arising in the late 1950s as a reflection of the heyday of the country’s urban middle class, especially in Rio de Janeiro, the bossa nova allows easier communication with international listeners.

The rhythm continues to conquer fans the world over, opening the way for new Brazilian beats and musical styles, even though bossa nova no longer has the same popularity in Brazil that it did 40 years ago.