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Artist Review
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MuzikiFan, Artist Review >>
I once saw a Senegalese dance troupe that consisted of a dozen white American college girls, many of them blonde. Needless to say the Africans in the audience loved it. The dancers were on their way to Senegal to perform and I wondered how they would fare when they performed some traditional dance that was now historically speaking static, and they didn't have the cultural context to innovate. Would they just become a curiosity and fade away? This is a a trend: American groups form around an idea, say Samba or African music or in this case, Pagodé, and play credible covers until they are recognised as an original act in the genre they started out mimicking. There are American, and no doubt European, bands formed around a core of foreign musicians & here is a band from the California college town Santa Cruz with a couple of Portuguese names and then some most-likely Americans filling out the line-up. I put it on thinking I would find it weak, and it was actually really fun. Carnaval just passed by in its annual alcohol-fueled blur in Brasil, and this was a pleasant armchair reminder of the better aspects: loud pumping music & wild swirling dancers (without the crowd of grasping hands in your pockets!). The band has a couple of guests and enough variety to give you a range of sounds, from the Ivete Sangalo sound on "Não Vai embora (Don't go away)" to the big axé groups like Ilê Aiyê, and pagodé ensembles like Ara Ketu on the opening cuts. If you've been to Carnaval in Salvador da Bahia it will be immediately recognisable, if you haven't you will get a thrill from hearing this high-energy music anyway. 03/02/10 >> go there
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