Echoes Feature Collection
Brazilian Echoes

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To look at the world music scene these days, you'd think the only music happening in Brazil is Bossa Nova and Samba. But there's more than the children of Jobim and Gilberto in Brazil. A look beyond the world music charts finds artists creating global fusions, new instruments and even space music.

In this special collection of features, we talk to some of these musicians. Some of them have pretty much moved to America, like Nana Vasconcelos and Airto Moreira. Others still live in Brazil, like Uakti and Fortuna. We also hear from Americans in Brazil, guitarist Pat Metheny and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Finally, we reprise an Echoes program from 1995 featuring a Brazilian soundscape that traverses the global village and parts of deep space still unknown. Celebrate Carnaval this year with a different Brazilian sound!


Yo-Yo Ma's
Brazilian Chamber Music              (2003)   

Acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma spends as much time in the world of cross-over as the world of classical music.

On his 2003 album, Obrigado Brazil, Ma gathered an all-star cast of Brazilian musicians including Sergio and Odair Assad, singer Rosa Passos, composer and multi-instrumentalist Egberto Gismonti and Cuban wind player Paquito D'Rivera, to play music born of Brazilian breezes and Amazon forests.

In 2003, we spoke with Yo-Yo Ma and his musicians about a music of joy and that haunting Brazilian-Portuguese melancholy known as "saudade."

Yo-Yo Ma
Sergio Assad, Yo-Yo Ma, John Diliberto, Paquito D'Rivera

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Pat Metheny in Brazil
(1989)
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This is the first Echoes feature we ran on Pat Metheny in October of 1989, the first-ever week of Echoes.

By then, The Pat Metheny Group was already the most popular, critically acclaimed electric jazz ensembles of the last two decades.

Metheny had already begun infusing their music with South American elements, particularly from Brazil. Those sounds were heard on their latest and still one of their most popular albums, Letter From Home.


Uakti          (1994)

Uakti is a Brazilian group who build their own instruments from gourds, bird calls and PVC pipe. Their creations look like mutant plumbing but sound like the lost relics of an alien culture.

In 1994, upon the release of their third album, I Ching, we talked with Uakti and heard instruments such as the glass marimba and the Trilobita.

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Trilobita

 Fortuna

Fortuna's Sephardic Hymns (1996)

Fortuna is a Brazilian singer who is adapting the Ladino songs of the Sephardic jews into evocative, modern renditions.

Possessed of an exquisite voice, this singer recalls the ethereal hymns of Enya and the timeless vocalizations of Lisa Gerrard from Dead Can Dance. At her home in Sao Paulo in 1996, we talked with Fortuna about her music and heard some Sephardic lullabies.

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Airto Moreira's Brazilian Reveries  (1992)

Airto Moreira preceded the current world music vogue by 20 years. The Brazilian percussionist has blended his traditional and modern instruments with jazz and rock artists like Mickey Hart, Chick Corea, and his wife and frequent collaborator, vocalist Flora Purim.

We spoke with Airto Moreira in 1992 for this feature, upon the release of his CD The Other Side of This.

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Nana Vasconcelos

Nana Vasconcelos  (1989)

Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos has played with Gato Barbieri, Don Cherry and countless jazz artists. He was one third of the world music jazz group Codona, played with the Pat Metheny Group and is now working out a rhythmic fusion of Brazilian and African percussion with synthesizers.
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New Music From Brazil or It's Not Your Father's Bossa Nova Anymore

(1995)
If you think of Brazilian music as sambas, bossa novas and meringues, then we have a surprise for you. Echoes explores some world fusion, acoustic improvisations and ambient atmospheres from Brazil.

Here's a soundscape of modern Brazilian music (approx 1 hour)

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