The band I want to write about here, and have wanted to write about for a while now, are not especially contemporary. To the best of my knowledge, they are not particularly well known (outside their native Rio de Janeiro). They are certainly not ‘cool’ or well respected as musicians. But there is something held within the music of ‘Grupo Revelação’ – and it really is an inexplicable essence – that I really love. It is, to use one of the most well-worn popular music clichés under the sun, ‘infectious pop’; inexplicable and capable of producing a very strong, yet massively underappreciated emotion within me. ‘Grupo Revelação’ makes me feel cheerful.
I say this not to belittle the music. I don’t want to present a colonial discourse of ‘oh, listen to this really cheery, sunshine music – effortlessly played by laid-back Brazilians on their funny little guitars’. This is not it at all. What I mean to say is that this music celebrates inclusion, movement, joy and emotion, and that it makes me feel happy. This does not make the music frivolous. The ability to induce a feeling of cheerfulness is as dramatic an effect as a piece of music that makes you feel pensive, sad, etc. I suppose in popular music discourse (to a certain extent) the concept of ‘seriousness’ and value are often synonymised with the more introvert and sombre spectrum of emotions.
So – personal history time. How I got to know about this band. Whilst living in São Paulo, I used to frequent a small, (illegal) copied CD stall – the kind that seem to crop up all over the world (thankfully). Having purchased extremely badly photocopied CDs from some of Brazil’s better known musicians (Fernanda Porta, Daniela Mercury, Djavan and a couple of MPB[1] compilations being among some of the highlights), I hit upon a novel idea. In (very) broken Portuguese, I asked the vendor what his favourite CD was. Without hesitation, he picked out ‘Ao Vivo’ [‘Live’] by ‘Grupo Revelação’ a fairly unassuming front cover – a few pictures of musicians, although, to be honest, the photocopied cover I got was almost unintelligible). The back cover, with the track names, was unreadable and the CD itself only had the word ‘REVE’ crudely written in CD pen; an enigma of a musical purchase if ever there was one, so much of an enigma in fact that the CD lay un-played for a number of weeks.
Read the rest of this entry »
Clearly The Grain is today honouring Shakira in all her convoluted glory and, having only just managed to tear my eyes away from the hedonistic visual treat that is the video for ‘She Wolf’ (see the post below for this sumptuous promo and a review of the album), I feel obligated to write a few words on learning, language, culture and what that has to do with Shakira being dead good.
A cursory glance at the Columbian singer would probably place her fairly snugly in the (North) American pop music category. Visual hit points covered: blonde, attractive, a penchant for provocative dancing and revealing attire. Vocal hit points: a voice that can flit from belting out high notes, to melismatic warbles, to soft-focus, heavy breathing, crooning[i]. Musical hit points: a palette of stock song types that range from up-tempo dance to slow, (either melancholic ‘love lost’ or sensuous ‘love consummated’) ballads. There is also a dalliance with rock guitar and, latterly, with synths and vocoders. Lyrical hit points: sexual, again, flitting between defiant independence and submissive desire – but, most importantly perhaps as previously noted, sung in English.
However, a closer inspection will reveal that these familiar hit points don’t quite sit so flush with Shakira’s oeuvre. Listening to any Shakira song leaves you with a feeling that something is not quite right. I don’t mean this in the sense that it sounds wrong – quite the opposite – it’s interesting and forces the listener to re-evaluate the clichés of pop music. I think this comes directly from her constant negotiation with a musical culture (American pop) which, to her, is not indigenous. To demonstrate what I mean, I’d like to talk a bit about learning a foreign language. Quite often when someone has learnt a language to a reasonable level of fluency, (and I’m talking here about vernacular language rather than academic language – i.e. learning through speaking, often immersed in a foreign culture as well as a foreign language) they tend to come up with jaw-droppingly brilliant terns-of-phrase that, whilst traditionally ‘incorrect’, shape the language in a new and exciting way that makes you reassess your own language conventions.
Read the rest of this entry »
All this discussion of post-modernity and appropriation of style on ‘The Grain’ recently[1] has left me thinking about the ‘authenticity’, to use a musicological buzzword, of such musical practises. The criticism often levelled at post-modernity is that too often it appropriates style without concerning itself with content – or context. Thus we lambaste artists who seem to quick to jump on the latest stylistic bandwagon. Case in point, the recent 80’s pop revival for taking the sound but leaving the meaning. The reason being that we take it as read that the meaning of music stems from the context (social, economic, historical) of the musician, and that this inevitably shapes and creates the sound. To take the one without the other leads, all too often, to pastiche – that most wretched of musical traits. On the other hand, as AN demonstrates in the Beastie Boys essay, when genre styles are appropriated into a meaningful context, when they are not just taken on fashionable, but on representational, aesthetical considerations, then the ‘old’ can be re-told and re-evaluated as something contemporary and valid. In addressing this well documented subject, I’d like to step outside of the Anglo-American dialogue, and talk about a band who I have become very interested in of late; Porno Para Ricardo.
Right – introductions. Porno Para Ricardo (PPR) are a Spanish – language, hardcore punk band from Cuba. Formed in the late 90’s, they have become prolific since the mid-noughties, releasing several albums on a self-run record label. Ok, a hardcore punk band from Cuba – as niches go, this one is fairly… well, niche – but bear with me. For PPR have seemingly committed wholesale appropriation (genre robbery, if you like) of a totally alien style in hardcore punk. They have taken 80’s New York and transplanted it into contemporary Havana. It is interesting to note perhaps that NY-Havana was a particularly busy cultural tramline that fed both cities (Salsa, Latin Jazz, Afro-Cuban styles, Bolero all owe their origin to this inter-city dialogue). It has since been artificially (and, some would suggest, superficially) closed by political forces. But this aggressive re-opening by PPR is just part of the significant re-contextualisation of style to create a new, politically motivated, meaning. PPR have taken the punk aesthetic on board firstly because it speaks to them both politically and aesthetically and secondly because they can re-mould it – play with the nuances, tinker with the conventions, fine-tune the sentiments – to speak for them and their unique situation. Is this post-modern? I don’t know. But it’s what post modern and the appropriation of the past should be.
Read the rest of this entry »
“I wish I was a punk rocker with flowers in my hair; ’77 and ’69, revolution was in the air”, or so sang erstwhile MySpace ‘phenomenon’ and purveyor of the insipid Sandi Thom. The rest of this forgettable track aside, these lyrics (and Thom can claim none of the creative spark for this sentiment) provide an interesting insight into the prescriptive nature of music history. There seems to be a general consensus, usually by those with a vested interest (Stuart Maconie et al I’m looking at you) that there are certain dates that are intrinsically ‘magical’ when it comes to music production, and thus are etched into our collective musical minds as significant. 1969 is one of these sacrosanct years. Even the most cursory of glances at the music press at the moment will yield myriad articles singing the praises of this year. Yet all will focus on one band, one album and one conclusion: the Beatles, ‘Abbey Road’ and that 1969 was a full stop at the end of a creative surge in popular music.
Ok, let’s get the necessaries out of the way. Yes, the Beatles were (and still are) unparalleled. They are among the most significant products this country has ever produced, and I don’t just mean musically, I mean they’re up there with the Magna Carta and the NHS! Yes, ‘Abbey Road’ is an amazing album and it did serve as the perfect end to the Beatles’ career[1]. But the way 1969 has passed into musical history, you’d be forgiven (well, not by me) for thinking that the whole of the music industry shut down, entering a dark-age of self-indulgent stadium rock until punk came along and breathed, or rather spat, vitality back into British music.
The points I’d like to try and get across in this article are firstly, that 1969 doesn’t simply represent the ‘end of an era’ and that a lot of exciting musical ventures took root in that year. Secondly, I want to try and dispel somewhat this prescriptive vision of ‘great years’ or even ‘great period’ of music in history. The sanctifying of an imagined past (almost always viewed in comparison to an un-favoured present and negatively projected future) is an overly simplistic and detrimental way of viewing music.
Read the rest of this entry »
Well, it’s finally over… apparently. The pantomime dames that are Noel and Liam Gallagher have finally drawn the curtain on the self-appointed ‘biggest-band-in-Britain’ once and for all (although whether Noel can be tempted back once more into the breech is a moot point). Now seems as good a time as any to assess the legacy the band will leave behind, and, at this juncture, it doesn’t look too rosy.
When Oasis first arrived on the main stage of popular culture, I was just about the dead centre of their (supposed) demographic. 11 years old, white, male, northern – perfect. I was also struggling to carve out an identity in a Britain that, at the time, didn’t seem to have too much to offer. So, along came Oasis with Union Jack guitars and songs that were fairly easy to imitate and, like so many, I bought it hook, line and sinker. I’m not ashamed to say that I loved Oasis. I was an Oasis fan. I loved the bravado, the ‘us against the world’ rhetoric. I loved the volatility, the bickering and when Liam stuck his forks up at a camera. But, in the words of Saint Paul; “when I was a child, I spoke as a child”. That’s the problem, the brothers Gallagher have singularly failed to put aside childish things for over 15 years – and they weren’t exactly children to begin with! I mean, I have a younger brother and we used to argue and fight and say we couldn’t stand to be around each other – when we were children. To see two brothers in their forties still doing it is just embarrassing. Their resolute inability to change even slightly has meant they have faded, ungracefully, into ever increasing irrelevance and it is sad in every sense of the word.
Read the rest of this entry »
