Sorry, guys, going out on a Springsteen free limb here, eager to see if there is any love for the bossa. To folk of a certain age, myself included, that can open up a vista over one of the most over-exposed and ubiquitous songs of the last century, the cloying Girl From Ipanema, but don't go, stick around. It isn't actually a bad song, you've just heard it too many times.
The Girl from Ipanema/Amy Winehouse
Anyway, this isn't about the song, it's about the style. Arguably no more than a variation on the Brazilian life-source, the samba, it swept in on a wave of innovation in the late 1950's, a condensation of the intrinsic rhythmic shuffle to the minimal, buoyed by off kilter chords and progressions, all syncopated to the max. The splendidly named Milton Banana was probably the originator, the drummer/percussionist for Joao Gilberto. Gilberto's Chega de Saudade (1958) was the first record recognised within this new form, the style then breaking in the film, Black Narcissus, a year later.
Manhā de Carneval (from Black Narcissus)/Elizete Cardoso
That's about as far down that historical alley I want to go, even bypassing the superb contributions to the genre gifted by celebrated saxman Stan Getz, who blows the breathiest whisper that instrument can manage and still be audible. A glorious tone. Because I've got you here to catch what has been happening to the style since the 60s. The enthusiasm actually fell away in the homelands, the breezy music sitting uncomfortably with the political frictions occurring in Brazil, even if every jazzer and his dog in the US was tearing Ipanema to shreds in supper clubs and hotel lobbies across the nation. As latin rhythms determined a more streetwise and funky uplift, courtesy Carlos Santana, so the cool jazz lite of the 'nova was on the fade.
Wild Horses/Karen Souza
It was actually my love for cover versions, an unceasing quest of mine these past two or three decades, that lead me back to Bossanova, let alone many another arcane and forgotten style. The Rolling Stones, always a favourite band of mine, have attracted versions across the musical map, encompassing blues, reggae and zydeco, all these having been avidly devoured. So when I discovered a label, PMB, originally based in Argentina, seemingly hellbent of exploiting the emergent love for chilled beats, and morphing this with the sounds and style of Bossanova, I was made up. As well as the Stones, there are also volumes devoted to Bob Marley, the Ramones and Madonna, the bandwagon then drifting to other labels, quick to produce similar Beatles renditions. OK, not all of this is good and some is a good deal even less than good, but, when it hits base, it is perfect. Well worth a punt, as easy to pick up cheap second hand copies.
Love Will Tear Us Apart/Nouvelle Vague
Meanwhile, over in France, Oliver Libaux and Marc Collin were having similar revelations, as they set up the band/collective Nouvelle Vague, which translates roughly both as New Wave, which is one of the possible translations also for Bossa Nova. Since 2004 they have produced a sizeable body of work, largely slightly kitschy covers of New Wave artists in the anglophone sense of the word. And, yes, I have most of their work too. But surely the style should be more than for smart arse copyists?
Essa Moça Tá Diferente/Bossacucanova
I'm afraid, as tends to happen, the worm hole of bossa covers led me to new artists and new material. Bossacucanova are amongst those who consider the format still keeping alive, and have injected a little more electronica to sit alongside. I can't say it grabs me as much as I hoped, so it is gratifying to round this piece off with something that really does bestride the decades, managing to keep the delicate angularity of the original songs, with a heft of 21st century credibility. Unsurprising, therefore, to realise she is second generation Bossa. Her father was Joao Gilberto, who wrote and sang the original Girl From Ipanema. Tanto Tempo was her big breakthrough album in 2000, and I can thoroughly commend it. But I had thought her a spent force, until I learnt of Agora, an album that came out during lockdown, in 2020, and which rapidly became one of my records of that year.
This could go either way. My occasional forays into musics outside the SMM staples of vocals/guitar/bass/drums seldom capture many glimpses, this post adding injury to insult by featuring one of the more vilified singers of recent(ish) times, tho' she is still active. So, listen to the track. Something familiar in the vanilla tones?
Or indeed the song, it being reprised, or at least the female vocal part, as My Lover's Gone, for the Dido debut solo album, No Angel. I'll come off the fence. I like Dido. There, I've said it, never quite understanding the usual smirks whenever her name comes up, at least in this country. (Is it any different in the U.S.?) Sure, she has a massive audience and has sold oodles of product, but in this land of loathing for tall poppies, the critical reception has been traditionally to scythe her down. Let's examine the evidence.
Dido, or Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O'Malley Armstrong, as she is compulsorily referred to within sneering put-downs, possibly never planned it thus. Her name(s), clearly, were given by her parents, who actually might take some deserved flak for that, and her musical history only began through her brother, Rollo, needing some female vocals for his band, Faithless. As with the featured song. Rollo, strangely never Rollo Constantine O'Malley Armstrong, is the famously non-participant member of Faithless, writing much of the material, leaving the other core members, Sister Bliss and Maxi Jazz, possibly also neither their full or given names, to perform them with associated session men and sundry electronica. Her cameo vocals were sufficient to grasp her a recording contract. And her own material, a sweeter and blander, more easily digested version of her brother's music, often written with him, was poised to fill the middle ground. There are myriad singers occupying arguably similar ground, and I will offend the fans of Sia and Paloma Faith by including them in that terroir, but it's true. There is always a niche for well played and performed, exquisitely produced pop music. But Dido had one huge stroke of luck, with one of her songs being picked up by star of the day/for the day Eminem. His sampling of her vocals was a master stroke, massively expanding both his appeal and hers, hoovering up both sales and plaudits aplenty. Thank you, Stan.
It is true, I haven't paid huge attention to her later work: I have her later recordings, or access to: my wife is a fan, having graduated effortlessly to that status, courtesy her adoration of Faithless and all things related. (An anecdote: it was my picking up her mention of the diminutive Maxi Jaxx on her dating site bio, that both caught my eye, endearing me to her, mistaken in her belief that my tastes did not run quite as far as they do. Had she then known I was listening also to hardcore bagpipe-driven folk-rock and steel drenched country, things may have turned out very different.......) But my affection remains, as those about me four scorn and disdain. The fondly remembered music mag, (The) Word, went on record to say that when they put her on the cover, it was their least selling copy, arguably saying more about their audience than Ms Armstrong. Perhaps I will have to check my stats after I post this?!
Purely because I hadn't realised this before, let me also draw attention to her appearances with and for other artists. Now it may be that Carlos Santana can be a bit of a tart, beefing up his appeal by and nearly inventing the idea of stuffing albums with as many guests as he can find, but this collaboration with Dido isn't so terribly bad.
As is, neither, this duet with Rufus Wainwright, for one of the Bridget Jones sequels. Quite a bit better, actually.If the notoriously picky and spiky Wainwright was willing to share a song with her, up a little further she goes in my estimation.
I don't know about you, but I love playing with words, adding and subtracting the prefixes that conjure up meaning, sometimes discovering more about the derivation of the meaning in a more nuanced way. This can creep up on you in a most insidious way, itself making me wonder why sidious isn't used more often, or ever, as its opposite. (Which led me again further to an interesting website which, in turn, has me wondering why no Darth Depende, but that is another story.)
OK, the/a state of independence aside, let's drill down into what there is to celebrate. Over here, of course, we don't, July 4th being just the day the state of dependency on this nation was lost. (It would be a holiday here every day, were a party thrown every time the once pink parts of the map changed colour.) And, as the recent ghastly kowtowing to Trump demonstrated, perhaps is not now the parent state now dependent on the child? And, in terms of folk to rely on, leading the country and all that, child really is begetting on the man......... If the picture above says anything, surely it is that. Anyhow, that's yer ten pennorth of politics, let's talk Santana.
Just how many of the Woodstock class of '69 are still performing, and, possibly, still performing at the top of their game? Carlos Santana has just brought out another record that seems to be suggesting he is doing just that. At a time and an age when merely to issue a new release can herald automatic fanfares of a return to form, often more, its true, in hope than in anticipation and reception, he may well have cracked it. Of course, there are a number of Santana's, the frantic percussion heavy latino rock that burnt the stage alive at Max Yasgur's farm, the mellower and jazzier mid period, morphing into a mystical fusioneer and, latterly, the elder statesman pumping out largely lacklustre material, "enriched" by special guests. I am a fan mainly of the first period, up to and including 'III', 'Caravanserai' onward, through 'Borboletta' and the John McLaughlin diversions sometimes failing to hold full interest. (The 'Caravanserai' mob here announce my soon to be arranged period of pillory, but I have tried, really, I have tried.) I think that once he had that hit with the fella from, FFS, Matchbox 20, I knew the rot had set in, and 'Guitar Solos' seemed to cement that, even if the conceit of that project, in my opinion, was no worse than any other vocalist thrashing through an album of covers. Santana's voice is, after all, his guitar.
I had high hopes for Santana 'IV', the old band brought back after their own stab at recreating thatt same time period, but both it and 'Abraxas Pool' disappointed. The next outing, hand in hand with the residual Isley Brothers, 'Power of Peace', was better, if seeming a vehicle more for they than he. So why should this one, 'Africa Speaks,' be any different, as they too were acclaimed as the rediscovered grail? Could it be the presence of Rick Rubin, the catalyst behind many a revitalised career, from Johnny Cash to Neil Diamond? Or is the presence of one Concha Buika, a veritable powerhouse of afro-flamenco influences? I have been following her career for some time, marvelling at her vocal prowess in several genres. Santana has never much used a female voice to any great extent, if Flora Purim will forgive me, and, if it has taken Rubin to sow this seed, well done that man. Listening to this record has had me excited about Carlos Santana for the first time in many a long year. OK, it is arguably a Buika vehicle with added Carlos, but the namecheck will boost the sales no end, the hopeful ever hopeful. It is outside SMM's usual structure to put up any video from music so new, and I am not going to change that now*, but here is some Buika to whet any appetite.
So, when you ain't got no one to depend on, when your old heroes are all out to pasture and recycling processed self-parody, who are you going to call. I'm thinking Rick Rubin might be your man. Not bad for an old hip-hop producer, say I
Maybe "Stones That Rock" instead of "Stones That Roll"?
I mean .. get up and dance (when the rhythm really kicks in).
I had more or less forgotten about Santana's Caravanserai album until I started digging for <Stones that Roll> songs. And then I kept mis-spelling Kervanseray as I wrote - and should have known better. Modern Turkish, my home-turf, still includes in its [govt sanctioned dictionary] kervan (travelling group) and saray (palace) in its vocab.
My loss for forgetting about Santana: this album includes so much that could be played over and over again. (The grooves of which album I wore down to their nubs back in '73 or so.) IMHO Santana, especially Santana before about 1980, could be played on auto-repeat. Even today. Caravanserai might well be the best of their work.
Although 1972 doesn't "seem like yesterday" any longer, Santana's music from '72 is no less viable today. <Stone Flower> is actually pretty standard Santana from that era: a loose jazzy progression that builds up over time and then explodes into full song.
Wikipedia notes that the album was a major departure from the band's previous style: I'm not sure I agree. Seems to me like a natural expansion from where they were: maybe a little more salsa and jazz, but that was already their apparent trajectory. But also the same era that the man was associating with Mahavishnu John... Hmm....
Then again, the intro to <Stone Flower> IS rather prolonged.
The song itself is actually an Antonio Carlos Jobim piece. And that album, from a few years before the Santana version, includes names I haven't seen in a few decades: Ron Carter, Airto Moreira. (And I once had an extensive ECM record label collection of 33RPMs, but there's reasons I haven't seen the names beyond the years between.)
We've had a lot of Christian music this week, so I thought I'd offer up something a little more universal by Latin-jazz-rock-fusion guitarist Carlos Santana. In the years before this release, he'd been making quite a musical splash, first in late-60s San Francisco, then at Woodstock (his blazing debut), and then worldwide. But around 1973 his music took a definite turn towards jazz fusion, a blend of jazz, funk, R&B, and rock heavily dosed with complicated time signatures. Miles Davis was at the forefront of jazz fusion, releasing in short order the groundbreaking albums Miles in the Sky (1968), In a Silent Way (1969) and Bitches Brew (1970). Some of the musicians on these LPs went on to further to fusion cause: Joe Zawinil and Wayne Shorter formed Weather Report, John McLaughlin formed the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Chick Corea, Airto Moriera, and Flora Purim became Return to Forever, and Herbie Hancock formed Headhunters, among others. Some of these artists also show up in Santana's albums around this time, but John McLaughlin in particular is a prominent influence.
Just as music made dramatic changes in the late 60s, religious ideas became more diverse and took a pronounced turn eastward. Like many trends of the era, this started with the Beatles. In 1967, the Fab Four, along with a passel of other A-list celebrities (Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Cilla Black, Donovan, Mike Love of The Beach Boys, Mia Farrow, and flutist Paul Horn) became interested in an unknown Indian guru, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, and his technique of Transcendental Meditation. As you might expect, fascination with all things Indian---especially Indian mysticism--- soon followed.
By 1973 John McLaughlin was a member of the Self Realization Fellowship led by Indian-cum-American guru Sri Chinmoy, and he converted Carlos Santana and his drummer Michael Shrieve to the fellowship. Sri Chinmoy taught that rapid spiritual progress could be made with divine love, divine devotion and divine surrender, which gives us our title. McLaughlin and Santana released an album with this title several months prior, but this song is from the album Welcome. Vocalists are Santana, Wendy Hass, and Leon Thomas.
"We are all seekers, and our goal is the same: to achieve inner peace, light and joy, to become inseparably one with our Source, and to lead lives full of true satisfaction.” Sri Chinmoy
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