Jeff Caltabiano (aka „jazzy jeff“) trifft in São Paulo Maurício Takara zum Gespräch – ein paar längere Auszüge:
There’s a certain pulse in São Paulo, unlike any city I’ve visited. The noise from traffic, helicopters, work crews, and vendors is constant and polyrhythmic. São Paulo often sounds and feels like it’s bursting at the seams. With roughly 12 million people in the city proper and 22 million in the metropolitan region, the megalopolis is loud – one of the loudest places I’ve visited – and this from someone who lived in lower Manhattan for over a dozen years. Takara told me this comes out in the music. He explained that you’re often practicing with many ambient noises in the background, so you’ve got to play to be heard above the din. Musicians can incorporate those found sounds into their music. As he said this, I could hear many sounds of the street coming through the windows in his studio, the buzz of São Paulo constant. In part due to the pandemic, Takara is temporarily living in Berlin and says there is a lot of quieter music there that would never be played here in São Paulo. He is surprised by Germans consider who consider Berlin loud.
Luckily, I caught Takara when he was back in São Paulo to perform some concerts. As a current expatriate, he spoke to me about the differences between Brazil and Europe. Takara explained that formal music education is limited in his home country. Experiential learning is often the norm for musicians in Brazil. As a result, he said it’s harder to find musicians who play orchestral instrumentals, like the cello for example. He also explained that Brazilian musicians tend to be less dedicated to only one instrument, thus, most active musicians in Brazil can play multiple instruments. Indeed, many musicians in São Paulo are multi-instrumentalists who can – and do – play in a variety of styles, even if they may have a primary instrument. Although Takara’s main instruments is drums, he’s also recorded on electronics, synthesizer, percussion, cornet, trumpet, vibraphone, shehnai, cavaquinho, and voice. He said when choosing collaborators for his music, he thinks in terms of the player, not in terms of the instrument they may show up with. This is in contrast to the musicians he’s worked with in Europe, who tend to be a specialist in only one instrument.
Similarly, Takara talked about São Paulo musicians being less bound by a particular style or genre of music. He complained that European musicians tend to be segmented into a particular music “scene,” unlike São Paulo where fellow musicians may play traditional samba on one night and then do an improvised set on electronic the next night. Indeed, I encountered musicians more than once live in São Paulo who played in different styles each time. Part of this is out of economic necessity – you play whatever style is necessary. But another part is that many musicians in São Paulo have been exposed to and are open to a variety of different types of music. Brazil has a deep musical tradition, with several styles of music indigenous to the country, many of which are still played today.
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Brazil, and São Paulo in particular, has a particularly do-it-yourself approach to making music. In my travels around the country I heard this over and over again. Many musicians and producers learn by doing and often just experimenting. One well-known young musician told me they watched a lot of YouTube videos to learn chords. This comes out in the music, which for many São Paulo musicians can take a more experimental approach. This DIY approach also comes to performance spaces. Takara told me, “the city is so rude to you, so people create spaces they enjoy.” He was happy to see that a number of DIY venues have popped up since the pandemic closed many other venues.
Den ganzen Artikel gibt es hier:
https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2023/03/06/sessao-de-verao-1-subterraneo/
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"Don't play what the public want. You play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doin' -- even if it take them fifteen, twenty years." (Thelonious Monk) | Meine Sendungen auf Radio StoneFM: gypsy goes jazz, #164: Neuheiten aus dem Archiv, 10.6., 22:00 | Slow Drive to South Africa, #8: tba | No Problem Saloon, #30: tba