Brazilian Music Day, September 7, 2012. The ARChive of Contemporary Music

Minas Music – Brazilian State of Minas Gerais Donates Music

Beginning Sept 7, the State with the coolest capital city name on the planet - Belo Horizonte - began collecting recordings and metadata for this project. You will be seing the info added to the database next week. Thanks to the local government and Lailah Gouvea Aburachid @ Programa Música Minas/Fórum da Música de Minas for making this all happen.

Baile Funk – The Funkeiros Fight - A Hidden Social and Cultural Movement

Essay by Emmanuelle Saliba on emergence of Rio's Baile Funk music as a social movement in the 1970s. Ms Saliba also provides a shortlist of favorite funk carioca songs and links here.

Music Genre Map of Brazil

Praca Onze – Musica Brasiliensis

Scholar Daniella Thompson has a few wonderful sites and here's a link to her history of Praca Onze (Square Eleven). Vanished landscape, birthplace of samba, history of early Brazilian recordings - its all part of this history of a public space, inspiration to a host of great songs, dancers, authors and musicians.

Soldiers Got Soul

Who knew that West Point was a hotbed of Portuguese language loving, Samba swingers? This is one of our favorite discoveries, courtesy of Lieutenant Colonel (Army) Carlos Frederico Cinelli. The Cadets went out of their way, early in the semester, to put this together for us. The performers of "Chega de Saudade" are all drawn from the Portuguese Section of West Point Department Of Foreign Languages. I loved the fact that every correspondence was marked, "unclassified." About the same time that this came in, Dr. Ivette Wilson, who is hosting an NPR radio show at Wabash College, said she will be singing "Chega de Saudade" in the classroom with her MLL-101 (Elementary Portuguese I) students to practice regular and irregular verbs in the present!

Let's Get Lyrical

If all this makes you want to sing, but your Portuguese is a bit rusty, may we suggest Lyrical Brazil, a very nice collection of lyrics, in English, each with a bit of history about the song.

Berimbau + Capoeira Class – London School of Capoeira

Will offer a Berimbau class in the morning and a 'Roda' - to improve your cool moves - in the afternoon. Sept 8, UK.

A Chapter + Verse – Contemporary Carioca

You can read or download the preface and introduction to Frederick Moehn's excellent Contemporary Carioca: Technologies of Mixing in a Brazilian Music Scene (Duke University Press, 2012). Mr. Moehn is Lecturer in Music at King's College London in the UK. Our pals at Afropop also publish an interview and overview with Mr. Moehn, Rio 2: Samba Strikes Back

11th International Congress – BRASA (Brazil Studies Association)

On Sept 7, Charles Perrone will speak on Eco-visualizations in Contemporary Brazilian Lyric. Others at the confab will cover topics on classical and popular forms and ideas. Centered @ the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. September 6-8

Library Display – Wiener Music & Arts Library

Elizabeth Davis + Sean Knowlton up @ Columbia have put together a display case of Brazilian materials in their collection. Drop by and see.

Can't Take My Eyes Off of You

I've always been drawn to a certain type of torch or maybe tortured singer - short dark cropped hair, nervous, vulnerable - from Helen Morgan to Judy Garland to Elis Regina. Here's an all too familiar song, performed remarkably by Elis. I'm also quite fond of list songs, and this is one of the best. Here's what I wrote about Jobim's "Águas de Março" ("Waters of March") a while back.

Choro – A Brazilian Musical Practice: The Roda de Choro

Nice blog entry just for us on history of Choro and performance practice from the good folks at the Choro Music Blogspot.

Donation of Regional Music – Programa Música Minas

On Brazilian Music Day Programa Música Minas / Fórum da Música de Minas will launch their campaign to collect the music from the State of Minas Gerais and donate this material to ARC. Thanks to Lailah Gouvea Aburachid for organizing.

Film Trailer– - Beyond Ipanema.    Watch the trailer to the film.

Donation of Digital Music – FarOut Records

London based and Brazilian centric FarOut Records is the first label to send us complete metadata on their digital releases. This is a good first step in our creation of a Digital Librarian and our Born2Loose cataloging project. Of course they also sent their physical material, and all the info is entered on our database page.

Don't Ask; Don't Tell

As I was leaving the ARC, after 22 hrs straight of html hell, I noticed quite a few events that were a part of Brazilian Music Day, but they forgot to tell US! Like the amazing radio and live event on WKCR, Sept 12. So I walked over to hear Brazilian DJ Miller Cruz who was throwing a party at Churracaria Tribeca. Digital CD turntables and a Macbook, using a baby grand as a mixing table, such is the modern world. But the sounds were mello, cachaça flowing, a nice cap to a great day.