Vinicius Cantuaria's Amazonian roots infuse his songs with a rare groove – and audiences can't get enough.
Next month, the Barbican celebrates 50 years of bossa nova – the music that has epitomised the sound of Brazil – and among the line-up is Vinicius Cantuaria, who reinvented the form in the mid-Nineties.
His album, Sol Na Cara, presaged the "nuevo bossa" vanguard of Bebel Gilberto, Moreno Veloso and Celso Foncesca, and the master guitarist, vocalist, million-selling songwriter and percussionist has come to represent the epitome of post-modern Brazilian cool. He last visited the UK in 2004 with his largely instrumental album Horse and Fish, recreating its subtle layers of acoustic electronica on stage with a three-piece band of drummer, percussion, and bass.
His latest album, Cymbals, features song collaborations with Angelique Kidjo, and guest appearances from some of New York's finest jazz players, but much of the languid, mellow album was assembled alone by Cantuaria in his New York studio, before drafting in guests such as trumpeter Michal Leonheart, cellist Eric Freidlander and the acclaimed young tenor sax player David Binney.
It's a line-up that's indicative of Cantuaria's New York night life among the city's clubs and recording studios. "There's so much going on here," he enthuses. "It's very rich musically, you can barely define it. People come from everywhere to play here. And I'm in New York to be more Brazilian – I feel it there that much more strongly than here in Rio. "
Cantuaria grew up in the Fifties in Manaus, a city in the Amazon rainforest. "You fly for more than an hour before you reach it. It's not possible to drive a car, and it takes four or five hours travelling through the jungle by riverboat. But it's a fantastic place, full of fantastic sounds, with the rainforest and river and animals.
"In Amazonas, mainly it's people of European descent and native Brazilians. So the colour there is different – they call it capoco, between black and white. They have a lot of percussionists there, but the sound is totally different, because it's not from Africa. I grew up there until I was seven. Many of my sounds come from there."
Cantuaria made his name drumming with rock band O Terco in the early Seventies, and later was a member of Caeteno Veloso's band. Veloso, like Gil Gilberto and Gal Costa, were part of the influential Tropicalia movement, but this didn't affect Cantuaria until many years later.
"Personally, at the time it wasn't a big influence for me," he says. "I was totally into music from England – the Beatles and Rolling Stones, and the Byrds and Dylan in America. But then I played with Caeteno for 10 years, and I'm there with the man, the master, and we shared a lot of experiences, and he showed me many, many things.
"And when Tropicalia started, radio was so democratic. Today we have stations that play just one thing only – one plays funk, one does jazz. But years ago in Brazil, we only had a couple of big stations, and they'd mix everything – the Beatles, then Sinatra, then Joabim and this really influences my music. Radio was the most important thing for me."
Back in Rio, he's been soaking up the music of some old friendsm but he's also there to nurture a long-held project to record with a string quartet and Amazonian percussion back in Manaus, and actually in the rainforest itself.
"I'm still on this project," he exclaims, "but it's not easy! I had a ticket to go a few weeks ago and take some photographs, because I want to do a book about this, but people called me to say it's not a good time to come, it's raining and the rain in the rainforest is so strong. It's not easy to travel. I wanted to record right there in the street markets and out in the rainforest."
Clearly, while the electronica may have largely gone, the spirit of experimentalism and exploration still blossoms. But however far he travels, the core of his sound is solid.
"It's Brazilian music with a contemporary influence," he says. And with many younger Brazilian artists breaking internationally, Cantuaria believes that as bossa nova celebrates its 50th birthday, we are currently living through something of a golden age.
"In Europe especially, Brazilian music is huge. Especially because of the young musicians from England and France and Japan – and the DJs, who use a lot of Brazilian music. You have the big names like Gil Gilberto and Caeteno Veloso who have been touring Britain and Europe regularly for the past 25 years – and there's young artists like Bebel Gilberto and Cibelle who are really great, and a lot of great electronic music. It's a really good time for Brazilian music."
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