Music doesn’t generally create history, but accompanies it for better or for worse. Same tides, same flow: rising with human comeuppance, or descending alongside a collective human crash. And the human race itself is like water: slowly flowing to the lowest point, changing its composition to rise to the top, only to fall down again. So that music is like water, we can’t live without it but it also celebrates our funerals. Horace Silver and Paul Gonsalves were two Portuguese Cape Verdeans, who made an enormous contribution to American Jazz by creating beautiful rhythmic flow, just ask Duke Ellington. I’m not a Fadista so I don’t know if there were any outside influences on the … [Read more...] about The Outsiders!
Portuguese music
Farewell to the restless soul of Madredeus
During the now-legendary beginnings of Madredeus in the late eighties, the group rehearsed in the wing of an old Lisbon convent. For anyone who has heard them, this was a perfect venue for their fado-influenced folk music. After those modest beginnings, Madredeus would go on to sell millions of records and become a success not just in their native Portugal, but worldwide. Yet founding member Francisco Ribeiro, who died on September 14 at the age of 45 from liver cancer, gave the impression that he would rather play his cello back in that old convent by the River Tagus, than tour the world as part of such a wildly successful group. “(Ribeiro was a) fragile person, in the most hardworking … [Read more...] about Farewell to the restless soul of Madredeus