Beyond Bossa Nova

By Christopher John Farley and Sergio Martins/Sao Paulo

Rio de Janeiro is the city in Brazil that people all over the world know. They know the cathedrals and the samba clubs, the curved white strip of Copacabana beach, the spread-armed statue of Cristo Redentor on the peak of Corcovado mountain. Sao Paulo, on the other hand, is the city that foreigners don't know. They don't know that it is in many ways Brazil's musical center, accounting for 57% of record sales in the country, vs. 13% for Rio. They don't know that, with a population of 17 million, it is not only far larger than Rio but also larger than Washington and New York City combined.

And most outsiders are almost certainly unaware that Sao Paulo is home to Max de Castro, 28, a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who just might be the most original musical talent to have come out of Brazil in three decades. That's no small statement. Music in Brazil is like sunlight: it's natural, it's elemental, it illuminates every building, every river bend, every aspect of life. "Dancing and music are in our blood," says William Nadir, 23, a Sao Paulo motorcycle deliveryman. "You can spot strangers by the stiff way they move their hips."

One can't think of Brazil without feeling certain rhythms. In the early 20th century, the country gave the world warmhearted samba and such performers as Carmen Miranda and Ary Barroso; in the 1950s and '60s it was soft-swaying bossa nova and Antonio Carlos (Tom) Jobim, Joao and Astrud Gilberto. Then, in the late 1960s and '70s, the Tropicalia movement marched in, armed with rock guitars and rebel lyrics and led by Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Gal Costa.

To this tradition, De Castro brings a sound that fluidly, intelligently and winningly blends disparate genres--samba, bossa nova, drum 'n' bass, hip-hop and soul--into futuristic music that echoes the past. On his debut album, Samba Raro (released last year on the Trama label), De Castro's lyrics, all in Portuguese, have an engaging, understated simplicity. The title song compares the movement of a beautiful woman to a samba (Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes made a similar comparison on their bossa-nova standard The Girl from Ipanema). Another song, Pra Voce Lembrar, tells the story of a man who breaks up with his lover during Carnaval. As the easygoing lyrics glide by, the focus for listeners is on De Castro's stuttering, intricate rhythms and his rich, involving melodies. "I tried to show that sometimes the melody and the rhythm are more important than just a few words," says De Castro. "That is one of the beautiful lessons of bossa nova that Tropicalia and other political movements just ignored."

Another key to Samba Raro's charm is that some of De Castro's songs mix in bits of Brazilian classics. For example, the gritty Afrosamba incorporates elements of Brazilian guitarist Baden Powell's 1966 song Canto de Ossanha. "The techno admirer likes Samba Raro because of the beats," says De Castro. "The soul fan loves my songs because of my soulful guitar, and the traditional Brazilian popular-music admirer catches the influences from Jorge Ben and Wilson Simonal that I put in." Yet De Castro doesn't use the past as a crutch. His originals, such as the elegiac Voce e Eu, are as strong as any of his sample-based compositions.

For a visionary, the young performer lives modestly. He shares a three-bedroom apartment in Sao Paulo with his mother, his sister, his collection of 4,000 vinyl LPs and his three favorite guitars (a Gibson B.B. King Little Lucille model, a Les Paul and a Fender Telecaster). De Castro isn't rich. Samba Raro sold about 30,000 copies, and last year De Castro pulled in about $70,000. Not bad but also no more than, according to a New York City tabloid report, Sean (P. Diddy) Combs spent on champagne one night this summer.

Still, Brazilians love their homegrown musicians. They resist the onslaught of American acts, the Britney Spears and the 'N Syncs, the Stainds and the Limp Bizkits. Some 70% of CDs sold in Brazil are by Brazilian artists--a higher percentage of local music than is sold in France, Italy, Britain or any other European country.

De Castro was born in Rio and grew up in a luxurious apartment on Avenida Atlantica. As a teen, he listened to American soul music. "At that time Max liked to copy Prince," says Joao Marcello Boscoli, a friend of De Castro's and head of Trama, his record label. "He used to slide across the floor to open the door, playing an imaginary guitar." Soon De Castro discovered the great Brazilian music that had been playing around him all along--Powell, Ben and Moacir Santos. His embrace of the music of his homeland was only logical. His father Wilson Simonal was one of Brazil's most admired singers, pioneering a mix of soul and bossa nova that discarded the latter's whispering style in favor of more assertive vocals. Simonal scored a number of hits in the 1960s and '70s, including a homage to civil rights titled Tributo a Martin Luther King.

The family's fortunes took a tumble in 1972, when Simonal was anonymously accused of having denounced his accountant to the police. Brazil at the time was suffering through one of the worst phases of the military dictatorship that ruled from 1964 to '85 (it is now a democracy). Simonal was never proved to have snitched, but his reputation was destroyed and he became unemployable. The family moved to a downscale neighborhood in Sao Paulo. Simonal became bitter, and left his wife and children in 1991, when De Castro was 18. Simonal died, broke and broken, last year. Wilson Simoninha, De Castro's older brother (also a musician), paid his father's hospital bills and funeral expenses.

The memory of his father's decline is still fresh for De Castro and still painful. "Sometimes you go into a record store and find all the works of Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso and never a CD by my father," he says. "People who write the history of Brazilian music act as if Simonal never existed. Nobody can calculate the price that my family paid for that."

Family means a lot in Brazil. It certainly means a lot in Brazilian music. Several of the other acts on De Castro's Trama label are second-generation stars. Berklee College of Music graduate Jairzinho Oliveira and smooth-voiced singer Luciana Mello are children of Jair Rodrigues, an acclaimed samba vocalist. Bebel Gilberto (daughter of Joao) and Moreno Veloso (son of Caetano) have released widely acclaimed CDs on other labels. Daniel Jobim, grandson of Tom, appeared on Moreno's CD. While pop-music progeny sometimes face ridicule and suspicion in the U.S., they are often embraced in Brazil. Jakob Dylan would do well to brush up on his Portuguese.

De Castro has a goal in mind. "Most Brazilian musicians are labeled international artists," he says. "I will be very glad when I enter an American record store and find Samba Raro not in the world-music section but beside people I admire like Prince and Stevie Wonder."

The best music, no matter how far away its origins, makes you feel right at home and speaks directly to your heart. Tom Jobim's gentle Desafinado, once "exotic," now seems neighborly and familiar. If De Castro has his way, people around the world may soon know all about Sao Paulo. But they may forget that it's in another country.

--With reporting by Sol Biderman

With reporting by Sol Biderman