KEXP, 90.3, Seattle, has posted the Top Ten lists from its Specialty Shows DJs. Youssou N'Dour's Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take) was among the year's favorites of Jon Kertzer, the station's expert on African and Afro-Caribbean music. Caetano Veloso's Cê and Ibrahim Ferrer's Mi Sueño are on the list from Darek Mazzone, whose show covers Modern Global Music.
For all the Best of 2007 lists from the KEXP Specialty Shows DJs, visit kexp.org.
NPR's music programs and reviewers are turning in their lists for the Best of 2007, and a number of Nonesuch artists are among the top choices from public radio.
Wilco's Sky Blue Sky tops World Cafe's list of the best albums of the year. Writes the show's host, David Dye: "As the year progresses, it's remarkable when an album from earlier in the year has staying power." But for Dye, Sky Blue Sky proves that it can be done.
For the complete World Cafe list, click here.
Banning Eyre, the music reviewer for All Things Considered and the senior editor at afropop.org, has three Nonesuch artists on his list of the Top Ten of 2007: Caetano Veloso, an artist "of Dylan-esque stature," with the album Cê; the "legendary" Sérgio and Odair Assad, whose Jardim Abandonado showcases their mastery at turning music from any genre into "a thing of warmth and perfection in their hands"; and Youssou N'Dour who sings on Rokku Mi Rokka (Give and Take) with "one of the most inspiring and vital voices in pop music anywhere today."
For Eyre's Top Ten, click here.
NPR's member stations are also weighing in with their pics. On the list for "Top Ten Jazz Jewels of 2007" from WDUQ in Pittsburgh is the Metheny/Mehldau Quartet record. And Wilco's "Hate It Here," from Sky Blue Sky, is among the best songs of the year, according to Austin station KUT's music director, Jeff McCord. He calls the song "a simple tune so slyly infectious that the CDC has their eye on it ... Wilco has made one of its finest albums to date. And that’s saying a lot."
For WDUQ's list of the best in jazz, click here. For the KUT song list, click here.
You can listen to tracks from each of the albums and songs on the list by clicking on the links above or by visiting npr.org.
David Byrne was on hand last week for Caetano Veloso's first show at the Nokia Theatre in New York, and he's written about the experience in his blog. In this excerpt, he describes how Caetano and his band allayed any concerns about the mix of styles in pairing the new songs in a set with the familiar older favorites:
... [T]he older stuff is generally sweeter than this new batch of songs, more often filled with turmoil and testiness. But this initial feeling of disquiet leads inevitably to captivation—even the cries of “I hate you” [the translation of the song "Odeio" off Caetano's new record, Cê] were somehow beautiful. They weren’t snarled as a punk or Emo band would do, but sung almost sweetly, and with a bewildered sadness that somehow those heavily charged words and feelings are bursting forth—the sadness of watching yourself say you hate someone.
Riding home on his bike after the show, David passed the brand-new home of the New York Times—a towering skyscraper designed by starchitect Renzo Piano—and took the occasion to muse on the state of journalism. The result is a fascinating essay pondering the future of news: who will report it, how it will be consumed, and how (or whether) it will be paid for.
You can read both entries at journal.davidbyrne.com.
As with all good things, Caetano Veloso's 2007 US tour has come to an end. It was with a rousing performance at Miami's Knight Concert Hall last Saturday night that Caetano closed his latest tour, this time featuring the music of his album Cê.
Prior to the final performance, the Broward-Palm Beach New Times published a profile of this "tour de force," marveling at "his ability to make your stomach quiver or tears well up in the corners of your eyes throughout his career." And though this tour may have come to a close, Caetano assures the paper's Jonathan Cunningham that as long as he can do it, he'll continue to make new music and tour.
In the article, which you can read at browardpalmbeach.com, Caetano also explains why he'll continue the activist role he's played since the early Tropicália days: "I think it's got to be that way," he says. "Artists fight for the impossible."
The Miami Herald's Enrique Fernandez was at the Miami show and reports that, while Caetano is indeed a father of Tropicália, he's also "the father of art rock, art pop." "Profoundly Brazilian," Fernandez writes, "he rocks with grace, charm, and sex appeal ... Caetano Veloso is arguably the most sophisticated pop artist anywhere. Everything he does, and has done since the '60s, is popular music as high art ... [offering] the best aspects of John Lennon, Paul Simon, Mick Jagger, and Bob Dylan."
With such a high-brow pedigree, Fernandez wonders rhetorically how Caetano, at 65, still puts on such a rocking good show: "Perhaps," he answers, "it's that open smile, still seductive after all these years. Or perhaps it's just the fact that he is so damn good."
Read the complete review at miamiherald.com.
The Guardian has revealed the last batch of albums on its list of the 1,000 all-time must-hears. Earlier this week, we brought you Nonesuch artists A through M on the list. Here are N through Z, along with the Guardian's take on each:
Orchestra Baobab: Specialist in All Styles (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 2002) "Until the arrival of Youssou N'Dour and his frantic mbalax style in the 80s, Orchestra Baobab dominated the Dakar music scene with their fine harmonies and blend of Latin and African styles. Invited to reform after a break of 16 years, they sounded as fresh and engaging as ever—and this time around, the quality of their recordings was vastly improved."
Radio Tarifa: Rumba Argelina (World Circuit/Nonesuch; 1993, r. 1997) "For more than a decade, Radio Tarifa were the quintessential world music band, mixing Moorish and African sounds and rhythms with catchy tunes. Singer Benjamin Escoriza adds a gritty charisma to the cleverly crafted studio concoctions of Vincent Molino and Fain S Duenas."
SF Jazz Collective: SF Jazz Collective (2005) "Under Joshua Redman's leadership, the SFJC pioneered a new approach to jazz repertoire that complements their better-funded counterparts in the 'straight' world. This is the first of a series of beautifully recorded live concerts that uses Ornette Coleman's compositions as a springboard to new work."
Rokia Traoré: Bowmboï (2004) "The most bravely
experimental female performer in Africa, Rokia Traoré started out
matching her cool, clear vocals against her own acoustic guitar and
traditional instruments such as the ngoni. Here she is joined by the
strings of the Kronos Quartet."Also listed were Youssou N'Dour (Immigres), Scritti Politti (Songs to Remember), and Caetano Veloso (Definitive Collection [UK]).
Check out the complete list at music.guardian.co.uk.
In the midst of a tour across the US, Caetano Veloso stopped for two nights in New York City, where he performed Monday and Tuesday this week to packed crowds at the Nokia Theatre. Today's New York Times reviews Monday's "briskly energetic show," in which "the tensions between body and spirit" that Caetano has often explored over the years have become all the more present for the 65-year-old performer. At the show, he performed songs from throughout his career, focusing on his latest album, Cê. "Lyrically, much of Cê is unabashedly carnal," writes Nate Chinen in the review,
Yet Mr. Veloso’s voice carries an abiding tenderness, and he sounded nearly as alluring on bitter new tunes (like "Rocks," a natural closer) as on vintage fare ("Sampa," a natural singalong) ... At another point he found meaning in juxtaposition, starting with "Homem Velho," a poignant tribute to the nobility of old age .... Then came "Homem," from Cê: a defiantly lustful, Fellini-esque rollick.
Of course there was stealthy sadness in the chorus, which bears this English translation: “I am a man / Loose skin over muscle / I am a man / Thick hair in my nose." Somehow this was just the right complement to the last few lines of "Homem Velho," written more than 20 years ago and possibly truer now than ever: "But he hurts and shines / Unique, individual, a wonder without equal / He already has the courage to know he is immortal."
Read the complete review at nytimes.com.
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Photo by Jack Vartoogian/FrontRowPhotos from nytimes.com
Caetano Veloso recently spoke with Newsday about his latest Nonesuch release, the rock-infused, Cê, and his long history with the genre, going back to the early days of Tropicália. Adding their own personal rock histories to the mix are Pedro Sá, the 35-year-old guitarist who co-produced the record with Caetano's son Moreno, and the other young musicians joining him on tour.
"The [new musicians] have heard most everything that has been important for me in the '60s: João Gilberto, Jorge Ben, Motown, Beatles, Hendrix, jazz," Veloso told Newsday's Ed Morales. "The fact that they are young is great also because things like Nirvana or Radiohead appeared when they were beginning their lives."
While it maybe be tempting to look at Caetano's long and prolific career as a bridge of sorts between those eras, he doesn't lay claim to the role:
I never intended to solve the contradiction between traditional and contemporary music ... Someone said that as far as mass culture goes, in the 20th century you were either American or provincial. Recognizing that as a given, and playing with the tensions that result from it, was the motivation of Tropicálismo. But real contemporary music can use tradition in so many ways: to reaffirm aspects of it while refusing others, to create a total contrast to it, to choose the role of its savior. Or, as we Tropicálistas did, sway through all of the above.
To read the complete article, visit newsday.com.
On New York Times music critic Jon Pareles's list of events to look out for this week are concerts by Caetano Veloso and Youssou N'Dour, two "musicians who qualify as full-fledged national heroes." While they come from different continents, both "accepted the same mission: to make contemporary pop that sounds both local and global, and highly individual." And each will perform at New York's Nokia Theatre: Caetano, "omnivorous, tuneful, [and] quintessentially Brazilian," performs tonight and tomorrow night; Youssou, whose voice—"clear, vulnerable, and urgent—represents Senegal and West Africa to much of the outside world," brings his Great African Ball to the Nokia on Wednesday and Thursday.
Caetano Veloso's tour through California in support of his album Cê began earlier this week in Pasadena, and Variety magazine reports that the 65-years-old singer "sounded effortlessly contemporary. Even more impressively, he did it without compromise." For Variety writer Steven Mirkin, the rocking stage show brings comparisons to Talking Heads, Lou Reed, and the Strokes:
But the music remains fully Veloso's. His sweet, expressive voice keeps the songs buoyant; there's never a sense of despair. He fuses the youthful sound with a poetic mature sensibility ... His longtime fans are already acquainted with his mental acuity (he's one of the few performers who make you feel smarter just listening to him) and the suppleness of his voice ... He may be old enough to retire, but right now, Veloso can match any indie rocker in energy and verve.
Caetano brings that energy further north this weekend, with a concert in Santa Cruz tonight and one at the San Francisco Jazz Festival tomorrow. In preparation for the area events, the Monterey County Herald looks back to Caetano's 2004 performance at SF Jazz, which "had all the trappings of a rock concert, with devoted fans rushing the stage near the end and showering the superstar with their adoration." And Caetano returned that fervor with the superstar performance they had come to see: "The charismatic personality of the lithe and handsome artist was in full force. He moves with grace and artistic purpose and his voice has an expressiveness that can bring a listener to emotional release."
For information on upcoming tour dates, click here.
Daily News Los Angeles recently spoke with Caetano Veloso, whom the paper calls "one of the most respected Portuguese-language poets in the world," in advance of a rare Southern California appearance last night in Pasadena. He plays tomorrow night in Santa Cruz.
In an interview with writer Michelle J. Mills, Caetano discusses a lifetime of musical influences. Some of his earliest musical memories are of his mother singing him old songs he would then learn to play on the piano. While he eventually moved on to the guitar, his love of bossa nova, and João Gilberto as the "supreme master," would stay with him even as he moved on to incorporate elements of rock into the new sound of Tropicália. And these days, as he performs songs from what has been called his most rock-influenced album to date, Cê, he points out the samba sounds on the record. Clearly, as Mills writes, Caetano "has gleaned grooves from a range of music" over the years and continues to create something magical and new in the process.
For information on the rest of Caetano's US tour, click here.
Last month, the San Francisco Jazz Festival was the site of the world premiere of Glenn Kotche's Anomaly, which the composer performed together with Kronos Quartet. This month, two more Nonesuch artists join the festival's 25th anniversary celebration, when Caetano Veloso performs at the Nob Hill Masonic Center this Saturday, November 17, and Youssou N'Dour hits the stage for the festival's closing night, Friday, November 30.
Later this year, for a series of special winter concerts, SF Jazz presents two groups with ties to Nonesuch as well. On January 25, 2008, Le Mystère des Voix Bulgares, the Bulgarian women's choir that released a Grammy-winning series of records on Nonesuch through the mid-'90s, and, the next night, Toumani Diabaté's pan-African Symmetric Orchestra, which released the triumphant Boulevard de l'Indépendence last year.
For more information on these events, visit SFJazz.org.
As part of its new feature, Source-Outing, Spinner.com asked Caetano Veloso to name five artists and albums that would give readers a better understanding of his own music. Writer Steve Hochman, in his introduction to Caetano's list, writes:
Some artists make music so distinct and unto itself that it's easy to overlook, or at least forget, that these artists—such as Miles Davis and the Beatles, for example—were in fact heavily influenced by others. Caetano Veloso is one of those artists, as well. In nearly 40 years he's covered so much ground but with so distinct an approach at all stages that trying to characterize any particular phase or album as anything different from any other just seems pointless and wrongheaded. Some have termed his most recent release, Cê, a "rock" album. But, really, it's simply a Caetano Veloso album, just as Miles Davis' Sketches of Spain isn't a classical-fusion album, it's Davis. Or Rubber Soul isn't a folk-rock album, it's a Beatles album.
As for Caetano's own thoughts on the albums that have impacted him, here are his top five: João Gilberto's Chega de Saudade; Jorge Ben's Ben ("the most beautiful and vital songs ever written and recorded"); John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band ("concise, direct, naked"); Bahian folk legend Dorival Caymmi's Caymmi e Seu Violão (an "exquisite mix of impressionistic harmonies and primitive feeling ... a whole world of music"); and Ray Charles's Dedicated to You. But Caetano, ever the generous artist, couldn't be kept to five and extended the list to include Chet Baker, Miles Davis, Arto Lindsay, Thelonious Monk, and fadista Amália Rodrigues, among others.
For more of Caetano's thoughts on these artists, visit spinner.com.
This past Sunday, Caetano Veloso made his Toronto concert debut, and today's Globe and Mail takes the opportunity to weigh in on the ever-evolving performer it calls, approvingly, "a master of 'all is not what it seems'" and "a trickster." (The latter is a particularly interesting choice of words, given that composer John Adams has used it to describe some of his own work.) And those tricks are no trifle. Caetano is, above all else, according to the Globe and Mail,
a creator of inverted notions of what it is to be alive and able to express that life through song—and of the meaning within the songs themselves. Back in the (Tropicalismo) day, he was famous for it ... Now, nearly 40 years later and in his mid-60s, he's still exploring the realm of contradiction and clearly enjoys having an audience that will happily follow him through the strands of that double helix. On Sunday ... a full house enthusiastically went wherever he took them, from old favourites to songs from his most recent recording, Cê.
On the new album and in concert, Caetano's unfailing ability to both play with and move beyond cliché expectations shines through:
The music of Cê in itself is prime Veloso in trickster mode. It's rock music that's a poke in the eye of "rockism," the elevation of certain rock music to exalted elite status ... But the music, whether audacious and driving or achingly melancholic, and from whatever period of his prolific songbook, was unfailingly stronger for any inherent contradictions.
Next up, Caetano heads to California with stops this week in Pasadena, Santa Cruz, and San Francisco. In advance of tomorrow night's show at the Pasadena Civic Center, the Los Angeles Times has published a profile of the performer. Writer Elijah Wald examines how Caetano has continued to excel in a culture and profession so geared to the young, maintaining what may be "the most varied career of any '60s icon."
Further supporting the concept of Caetano-as-trickster, the singer tells Wald that the sound for Cê evolved from an inside joke of sorts he developed while working with his son Moreno and guitarist Pedro Sá, both 35, who co-produced the album: "We would create a repertoire, invent sounds, and I would hide," Veloso says in an interview with Wald. "It would be a secret thing, like those guys in England did, the Gorillaz, and we would do it as an experiment, as if it were a new band."
The Times article points also to the juxtaposition of this record with Caetano's previous Nonesuch release, A Foreign Sound, from 2004, in which the Brazilian legend put his own spin on classic tunes by an older generation of songwriters, including Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, and the Gershwins. "So in a way," writes Wald, "that album and this one have allowed him to confront his own maturity from opposite directions."
To read the Globe and Mail Toronto concert review, visit theglobeandmail.com.
For the LA Times preview of tomorrow night's show, visit latimes.com.
For complete tour information, click here.
In this week's issue of The New Yorker, music critic Sasha Frere-Jones previews Caetano Veloso's upcoming shows at New York's Nokia Theatre, November 19–20, part of a nationwide tour in support of his new record, Cê. Frere-Jones has this to say about the incomparable Brazilian singer/songwriter:
Had Caetano Veloso just aged gracefully, it would have been enough. Had he merely written thirty or so perfect songs, it would have been enough. Had he only recorded Cê, one of the most striking and least indulgent rock records of 2007, it would have been enough. But on top of all that there’s the fact that when he comes to New York, he gets to play to his crowd ... When Veloso performs older songs like “Sampa” or the gorgeous “O Homem Velho,” the air will fill with the sound of a thousand voices singing along in Portuguese. If anyone’s bothered to sit down, they’ll soon be back on their feet...
Earlier this year, Frere-Jones reviewed the album in The New Yorker, calling Veloso both "a singer of almost paralyzing grace and sweetness" and "a high-minded rebel." And of Cê, he writes, "The music can only loosely be described as rock. As with almost any genre that Veloso tackles, he has transformed it ..."
To read more of what Frere-Jones has to say about Caetano's Cê tour, visit newyorker.com.
For tour dates and locations, click here.
The Associated Press has announced that Gilberto Gil will resign as Brazil's minister of culture next year to seek treatment for a polyp on his vocal cords. The polyp first caused the legendary performer trouble at a concert performance last year.
When Gil took on the official political office in 2003, it was an unexpected turn of events for the longtime activist; he was jailed in 1968 along with Caetano Veloso for what the military dictatorship then in power took to be the subversive nature of the Tropicália movement the musicians had founded.
Congratulations to Caetano Veloso, who, last night, was awarded Latin Grammys in both of the categories in which he was nominated. The ceremony, held for the first time in Las Vegas, brought Caetano awards for Best Singer-Songwriter Album for Cê and Best Brazilian Song for "Não Me Arrependo," off the new CD. That brings his total number of Latin Grammys to five (past wins include his albums Livro and Noites do Norte) and makes him Brazilian artist with the most wins in the Award's history. For more on the Grammys, visit grammy.com.
Listen to the winning song, "Não Me Arrependo," here:
To explore the winning album in depth, with a multimedia mini-site featuring video clips, interviews, and Caetano's track-by-track discussion of the album, click here.
Caetano's currently touring the US with songs from Cê along with others from throughout his career. For tour information, click here.
Following Caetano Veloso's sold-out show at the University of North Carolina, the school's Daily Tar Heel offered a glowing review and a uniquely student-centric perspective on Caetano's latest, most rock-influenced work, Cê, and his current tour of the US.
And it seems like playing for the younger crowd was a good match for the youthful singer: "It makes me happier," the paper quotes him as saying, "because I think that a university town has a lot of young people and young people are very curious. They're interested in things."
One audience member who was certainly interested in what Caetano had to say was Ligia Austin-Brodie, a local resident who said of the singer, "He brings peace and happiness ... and he is my Caetano."
Next up on Caetano's US tour is another college town, Ann Arbor, Michigan, where he performs tomorrow night. For more tour information, click here.
To read the Daily Tar Heel review, visit dailytarheel.com.
In this week's sparkling new 40th Anniversary edition of Rolling Stone, the magazine calls readers' attention to linktv.org/worldmusic, the international nonprofit network LinkTV 's site for on-demand streaming music videos, interviews, and documentaries on music and musicians from around the world.
Among the site's featured materials are concert footage of Malian singers Amadou & Mariam performing songs from their smash CD Dimanche à Bamako in Paris and a documentary feature that, in the words of its host, "looks at Brazil and its music through the eyes and voice of it greatest songwriter and poet, Caetano Veloso."
To watch Amadou & Mariam in concert, click here.
To see the site's documentary on Caetano, click here.
Caetano Veloso performed at Boston's Orpheum Theatre last Friday, and in today's Boston Globe, staff writer Joan Anderman reports on what was a full-on rock show by "the gifted and eclectic Brazilian superstar." With the focus of the concert on Caetano's latest album, the rock-influenced Cê, "the setting was stripped-down and austere by the artist's standards, but the ideas were not." Writes Anderman in her song-by-song review:
Art-punk was the show's main touchstone, and the spirits of a couple of rock's deepest, freest thinkers—David Byrne and Lou Reed—hovered throughout. "Musa Hibrida" took flight on the wings of Pedro Sá's spacey wah-wah guitar, which turned sweet for the modernist bossa nova "Um Sonho." While "Não Me Arrependo" and "Deusa Urbana" were built of bold melodies and galvanizing rhythms, "Outro" and "Odeio" traded in lighter, snappier textures, which grew ragged for "Rocks," whose roots can be traced to that proverbial bastion of youthful exuberance, the garage.
You can listen to clips from these songs off Cê by clicking here.
To read the full concert review, visit boston.com.
In today's Boston Globe, correspondent Siddhartha Mitter previews tonight's Caetano Veloso show at the Orpheum Theare. In Caetano's current artistic output, Mitter finds that the 65-year-old singer "still shows the restlessness that first earned him fame in the late 1960s." Yet for all the sonic surprises on the new, rock-influenced album Cê, "the man's voice is as richly seductive and thoughtful as ever, and the lyrics ... offer intellectual and cultural queries presented in the Veloso manner, suffused with yearning and ambiguous eroticism."
To read what Caetano has to say about the album, about life in Brazil today, and about the impact of the Tropicália movement he helped create, visit boston.com.
For information on Caetano's US tour, click here.
In today's Boston Herald, Caetano Veloso lays out a complex path of inspirations for his new record, Cê, from Brazilian singers of the 1930s all the way up to the Arctic Monkeys and Animal Collective today, with stops at vintage-era Talking Heads along the way. A still more personal influence on the new sound is Caetano's son Moreno, who produced the album, as well as his younger sons Zeca, 15, and Tom, 10 (the latter only recently taking up the family interest in music after years with a solid focus on soccer). As Caetano tells the Herald, "These three are the best things in my life."
To read the complete interview, visit bostonherald.com.
People in the Boston area can catch Caetano Veloso live at the Orpheum this Friday. For more tour dates, click here.
In a sprawling interview with pitchforkmedia.com, folk rocker Devendra Banhart talks about everything from colonial American history to making his new record using an authentic Nicolai Tesla–made microphone. Banhart, who appeared earlier this year at a David Byrne–curated concert at Carnegie Hall, also recalls what he says is the "best review" he's ever gotten; it was from Caetano Veloso:
The best thing I've ever heard about my music, ever. We played a show in Brazil. It was a festival, and we went on at three in the morning. We're playing, and first off I was a little nervous that Caetano [Veloso] might be there, but between two and three there's no way he's there. We're done paying at 4:30, the sun is slowly starting to rise. It's dawn. And who comes running backstage ... ? Caetano Veloso. He comes up and goes, "Guys, that was awful! I loved it!!" Best thing I ever heard. It was insane. It was honest.
Read the complete interview at pitchforkmedia.com.
The New York Times, in its list of must-sees on a short trip to São Paolo, Brazil, includes Bar Brahma, because "as everyone will tell you, this is where Caetano Veloso's soulful song 'Sampa' starts out. Legend has it that Caetano wrote the song from there." Read the full list at nytimes.com.
