/ARTS WEEKLY/ MUSIC-BRAZIL: The Weight of a Legacy

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Sep 30 2003 (IPS) - Maria Rita released her first album at age 26, unlike other singers and musicians with famous parents who had records on the market when they were still practically adolescents.

In addition to having lived eight years in New York, Maria Rita had to prepare herself for a future of enormous responsibility. Many expected her to be a resurrection of her mother, Elis Regina, one of the greatest singers of Brazilian popular music in the 1960s. She died in 1982 at age 37.

The daughter’s first album hit the market when she turned 26, in early September, bearing the simple title ‘Maria Rita’. She has decided not to use her surnames, as her mother did, renouncing her own surnames Carvalho da Costa.

Maria Rita’s father, Cesar Camargo Mariano, is a renowned pianist and a leader in the world of Brazilian popular music. He has two other children also dedicated to music, one at the helm of a major recording label, Trama.

Her voice, singing style, gaze and gestures are like her mother’s, and music critics have pointed this out since she began performing a year and a half ago.

Maria Rita denies purposely imitating her mother, saying she has spent more time listening to U.S. singer Ella Fitzgerald and she points to Canada’s Holly Cole as the influence that led her to choose a trio of piano, acoustic bass and percussion to accompany her.

Regardless, she has a beautiful voice that stands out among the many female singers that have emerged recently in Brazil, including other daughters of musical celebrities, like Preta Gil, whose father is composer and singer Gilberto Gil, now Brazil’s minister of culture.

More than 100,000 copies of Maria Rita’s album sold in one week. In Brazil this is nearly unheard of, but it was helped by a major publicity campaign that included a television programme and stories in the culture pages of all the major newspapers and magazines.

But it remains to be seen whether she will fill a role like Elis Regina, leader of an entire generation. The times are different. Music no longer serves the same purpose in Brazil as it did in the 1960s and 1970s, when it was an instrument of national identity or resistance against the military dictatorship (1964-1985).

Maria Rita’s album is well made. It reveals a singer with great voice and technique – but with no surprises.

The 13 songs are performed in an array of styles, but are sometimes monotonous, in spite of varied rhythms, which range from blues to samba to the bolero ‘Dos gardenias’, a nod to Cuba’s Buena Vista Social Club.

In Brazil today, there is an obvious lack of new, high quality songs that are capable of expressing a national sentiment, like some of the songs of Elis Regina did, and which reinforced her charisma.

Such was the case of ‘O bébado e o equilibrista’ (The Drunkard and the Acrobat), a samba by Joao Bosco and Aldir Blanc that, sung explosively by Regina, in 1979 became the symbol of the political amnesty and the return of many political exiles to Brazil.

There are no signs that Maria Rita will have the opportunity to sing anything of similar impact. Nor does her style indicate that she will have the power of her mother as the voice of some cause, whether musical or political.

Like her, there are numerous singers, composers and musicians who have emerged from the shadow of their famous parents, but in general they have entered the musical market at a more tender age than Maria Rita.

In addition to Preta Gil, who released an album in which she appears nude on the cover, and the two other children of pianist Camargo Mariano, there is also family talent in the offspring of stars like Caetano Veloso, Martinho da Vila, Paulinho de Viola and the great guitarist Baden Powell, who died three years ago.

Brazil, like most of the rest of the world, is dominated in movie theatres by U.S.-made films. But the story is different for music. Brazilian musicians and singers not only sell more albums on the domestic market, they also have enormous radio and television audiences and have conquered foreign markets as well.

Brazilian music has established a presence in the United States, many European countries and even in Japan, where bossa nova, a slower version of samba and influenced by the jazz of the 1950s and 1960s, has won a strong following.

Brazil exports its music, and often its musicians. Singers, guitarists and percussionists work in other countries – and often with great success – having given up on trying to compete in the crowded national music scene.

In some cases they are more famous abroad than at home, like Baden Powell, who lived many years in Europe, and the singer Joyce. Others are of the younger generation launched their careers in other countries, such as Biá, a singer who lives in Paris, is unknown in Brazil, but much applauded in Europe, North America and Japan.