INTERVIEW WITH SEU JORGE

​Most American listeners probably know Brazilian singer-songwriter Seu Jorge as the soft-spoken dude singing David Bowie covers in Portuguese in Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. He's also acted in City of God and alongside Brian Cox in the 2008 prison-break movie The Escapist. His latest musical project, though, is a radically different affair.

The self-titled Seu Jorge & Almaz is a full-band record, and a surprisingly rockin' one at that. The group features guitarist Lucio Maia and drummer Pupillo from the funk-rock band Nação Zumbi, pioneers of a Northern Brazilian sound called "Mangue beat." (Their first two albums, Afrociberdelia and Da Lama ao Caos, featured activist frontman and street prophet Chico Science, but the ones they've made since his death in 1997, particularly Futura and Fome de Tudo, are just as essential.) Here, they're joined by bassist and film-scorer Antonio Pinto (Central Station, City of God, Lord of War, Love in the Time of Cholera), with Mario C. handling production. The album is all covers, with a surprising range, including Roy Ayers' "Everybody Loves the Sunshine," Kraftwerk's "The Model," Michael Jackson's "Rock With You," and many Brazilian songs. In advance of the group's show later here this week, we called Jorge at his home in Brazil to chat.

Your previous albums have had a softer sound, mostly dominated by acoustic guitar. What made you decide to make a more rock-styled album?
I wasn't trying to make a rock-style record, it just happened that way. I was invited to record one song for the soundtrack of a movie [with these guys], and after we recorded the song, we looked at each other and decided to make an album. The formation of the band was something I'd never tried before, with stronger guitar, different drumming—especially the two from Nação Zumbi, who are very, very good musicians. And the bass player, Antonio Pinto, has done movie soundtracks all over the world; I knew him from City of God. It's fresh for me, it's different for me, and I think it's different for Brazil, too, because it's an opportunity to show people around the world a new conception of Brazilian music.

Lucio Maia is a pretty unique guitar player. How much of the arrangements were up to him?
Everything, because he was the conductor. We followed him many times. He had a lot of pedals, and he's a very, very good musician. He's not a musician, he's an artist. And Pupillo is the same, and Antonio is the same.

Had you been a fan of Nação Zumbi for a long time? How did you get hooked up with those guys?
Yes, the first time I saw them was with their leader, a guy called Chico Science. Chico Science died years ago, but within a very short time he made a lot of music, and it's had a big influence on a new generation. Nação Zumbi can point Brazil in another direction with the diversity of their music. It's very unique, very strong, very original.

It seems like that Mangue beat sound is a secret Brazil is keeping for itself...that style of music hasn't made the same global impact that samba, bossa nova and other Brazilian music has.
Yeah, and I would like to try and book a tour, a Nação Zumbi tour with Almaz, to show people that there's a new Brazil. It's a great moment, because it's a new decade, and there's the potential to find another way. Brazil has so much, in all areas...culturally there's a new generation, and Lucio Maia said, 'Let's do it right now, because it's a new decade. 2010 started things again.' The new generation is hungry for news, information, for new conceptions, to rejuvenate what we need to do. And the new album can help with that—that's our intention.

Why did you make the record all cover songs?
They're all songs we've been hearing all our lives, and they're from different perspectives. Like, Pupillo brought in "Rock With You," and Lucio suggested "The Model," and Pinto brought in "Cristina" and "Everybody Loves the Sunshine." And together we realized everybody loves these songs. This repertoire makes it easier for people to understand the music.

You do a lot of cover songs, period - why is that?
My perception about this is, with David Bowie for example, I didn't know Wes Anderson before Life Aquatic, and he approached me about David Bowie. To me he's a great, great artist, but before the movie I didn't know much about him. When I wrote the songs in Portuguese, I realized how complex and poetic it was. It was very hard for me to do justice to David Bowie. But for myself, I felt like these were new compositions. Cane and Able [whose song "Girl You Move Me" appears on the record] was something different. That's obscure. Mario C., for example, who produced the album, he didn't know Cane and Able, and was completely shocked when he was listening to the music. I told him, Cane and Able didn't release their album in America, just in France and Brazil. And my wife looked at the picture on the cover, and thought this [would be] a good album. And she put it on and discovered a great song and showed it to me. I selected this song, everyone loved it, it was very fresh.

So is this an ongoing band?
Yeah. I wanna write new songs, original ones. I wanna do the tour first, travel from city to city, find some melodies, write some lyrics. I think the next thing is to write an album of original songs.

[From the Village Voice.]

DADDY YANKEE IN SPACE

Published this in the Village Voice almost a month ago and forgot to link it here...enjoy!

Reggaeton's in a weird but kinda awesome place in 2010. The raw, adrenalized dancehall-in-Spanish sound that vaulted into the mainstream pop consciousness back in 2003 (in large part propelled by two swaggering Daddy Yankee singles, 2004's "Gasolina" and 2005's "Rompe") is all but gone, replaced by a fragmented but ambitious style that can encompass the omnivorous, smirking cultural juggling act of Calle 13, the culturally conscious electronica of Tego Calderón, and . . . science-fiction club tracks?

Yes, the dominant sound of reggaeton in 2010 is futuristic electro-trance. The major artistic statements of the past couple of years have emerged from two artists: Powerhouse duo Wisin y Yandel, they of 2007's Los Extraterrestres and last year's La Revolución, remain lyrically pretty straight-ahead (as sticking to love and sex has allowed the duo to sell out arenas worldwide), though musically, especially on the latter album, they've delved into Euro-disco with thick, squelching synth lines. As did Don Omar's awesomely bizarre iDon, wherein the self-proclaimed King of Kings rapped about zero gravity on Kraftwerk-meets-Daft-Punk tracks like "Sexy Robotica," "Galactic Blues," and "Virtual Diva."

As for Daddy Yankee (real name: Ramón Ayala), he's always been a more complex and multifaceted performer than "Gasolina" and "Rompe" might indicate. His breakthrough album, 2004's Barrio Fino, packed plenty of the thunderous beats reggaeton fans demanded, but also showcased his sensitive side (and his English) on "Like You," and mixed in some salsa on "Sabor a Melao," a collaboration with Andy Montañez, former vocalist for El Gran Combo. His 2007 followup, El Cartel: The Big Boss, offered some pure reggaeton tracks and another "salsa-ton" song ("Ella Me Levanto"), but it was in large part a calculated pop move, a 21-track disc packed with guest spots by such ultra-street titans of Latin music as will.i.am, Fergie, Akon, and Nicole Scherzinger, with production and songwriting credits for both Scott Storch and Kara DioGuardi. Though it sold very well, artistically it might have been a step too far; heard now, it seems like less than the sum of its many, many parts.

Daddy Yankee may have thought so, too; on 2009's soundtrack to his 8 Mile–ish movie Talento de Barrio, he returned to a harder, more explicitly urban sound, limiting the guests to fellow Puerto Rican artists. And now, on Mundial, while he's once again doing much more than the aggressive rapping casual listeners know him for, he's also riding the waves of rapid change in Latin pop. Multiple tracks here abandon the trademark reggaeton rhythm entirely, opting for a thumping electro 4/4. But very few do just one thing at a time. "La Despedida" is a hyperactive merengue track, with Yankee singing through a vocoder up top; "Daría" finds him in full loverman mode, backed by a booming hip-hop beat and a guitar-and-accordion melody that's pure vallenato (folk music from northeastern Colombia); "Mintiendo Con La Verdad" brings the accordion back atop a merengue rhythm; "Grito Mundial" is a soccer anthem propelled by massive Brazilian drumming.

Perhaps the most surprising track on the disc, though, is "Vida de la Noche," which is pure Daft Punk techno, with Yankee singing, rapping, and shouting out Guns N' Roses. In keeping with the album's high-tech sound, the cover looks like a patch on an astronaut's sleeve. Although Daddy Yankee and reggaeton have both been moving in this direction of late, Mundial is still a surprising album—an alien that new listeners may be surprised to find themselves loving.