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The rebirth of Beth Carvalho, the Rio samba revolutionary who recorded her career in super-8

2023-01-28T10:52:19.858Z


The singer from Rio de Janeiro, who died in 2019, is celebrated in a documentary and in a book about the album 'De pé no chão', which marked a before and after in the musical genre that is in the DNA of Brazil


Beth Carvalho (Rio de Janeiro, 1946-2019) was a good girl.

She grew up in a wealthy family and ran around Ipanema when meetings of musicians whispering next to a guitar took place in the apartments of this Rio de Janeiro neighborhood.

But although Doña Beth was fascinated with João Gilberto's invention, deep

down bossa nova

was not her thing.

“The elitism of those gatherings irritated me a bit, musically it was good, but the behavior was elitist,” she said.

What she really liked were Carnival and the lively

rodas de samba

of favelas and suburbs, where the public surrounds and cheers the musicians who play and sing seated around a table, generally well stocked with ice cold beer.

Her popular vocation and a fine nose for her talent led her to work with some of the best composers in the country, almost anonymous people whom she met on the corners of bohemian life.

She recovered forgotten poets and launched young promises to stardom.

With the album

De pé no chão

(with your feet on the ground), released in 1978, she revolutionized samba by incorporating new instruments and an innovative way of playing.

Now, a documentary and a book about that album that broke the mold vindicate the importance of her legacy.

"Beth always knew that their meetings were historic, but she recorded everything," explains Leonardo Bruno, the screenwriter of the documentary

Andança

, which portrays the life of the singer told practically by herself, in a cafeteria in Rio.

Ahead of her time, Mrs. Carvalho was already an

influencer

in the seventies.

She would walk around Rio with a super-8 camera in which she would record all of her magical encounters with those unknown artists that she would later end up working with.

This material (800 tapes, more than 1,600 hours over four decades) is the "pure gold" on which Bruno and the documentary's director, Pedro Bronz, worked for months.

The result of this difficult editing task is

entitled Andança

, the ballad that became his first hit, and opens on February 2 in Brazil.

Beth Carvalho with the musicians of Cacique de Ramos in the photos of the album 'De pé no chão' IVAN KLINGEN

Among the dozens of unprecedented moments are, for example, Carvalho's delicate talks with his beloved Cartola and Nelson Cavaquinho, the composers of the Mangueira samba school.

The lyrics of As Rosas não falam

and Folhas

secas

are presented to him as the one who does not want the thing

, two compositions that in his voice would become hymns.

The veneration for these and other poets from the favelas was a constant.

“She was never alone, in each song she quoted the composers, she gave them a voice, she sang with them so that she could see her face”, Bruno recalls.

In her documentary, she is even seen complaining in the recording studio that the record companies pay them less than singers like her.

Her political struggle went hand in hand with her artistic career.

She has always declared herself openly on the left, and she did not hide her admiration for Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez or Lula.

Those sympathies had some professional cost, but no one was able to 'cancel' one of the most beloved artists in Brazil.

Carvalho was a woman in an environment dominated by men, a white woman among blacks and a daughter of the upper class among people from the periphery.

But all of that never seemed to matter.

She camouflaged herself in such a way that she seemed like one more, but always with respect and admiration for her before those who received her with open arms.

When in an interview she defended that "Brazilian" had to be vindicated and the journalist asked her what exactly that meant, the singer answered without hesitation: "blackness", an anti-racist defense rare in the eighties among big celebrities.

She always displayed a careful attitude that shielded her from any hint of cultural appropriation.

With that balanced mixture of humility and self-confidence, she arrived at the headquarters of the Cacique de Ramos, a

bloco or

carnival troupe in the north of Rio.

There, the musicians would gather outdoors under the shade of the famous “sacred tamarind” and play samba in a different way.

They used instruments rarely seen in the

rodas

until then: the tam-tam, the hand peal and the banjo.

Instead of drumsticks, they used their hands, something unusual that brought the sound closer to that of the

candomblé

terreiros .

It was a more Africanized

samba

.

Carvalho had a crush.

“I went every Wednesday, but on a level of connection, of love.

It was an affective, musical thing, without any pretense that it would become a nursery.

It became that, but it was not my intention, ”he says in the documentary.

Beth Carvalho with Nelson Cavaquinho on guitar.IVAN KLINGEN

What started as a happy discovery soon became an encounter that revolutionized Brazilian music.

From Cacique de Ramos, and blessed by Carvalho, who immediately earned the nickname of

Madrinha do Samba

, came names like Zeca Pagodinho, Arlindo Cruz, Fundo de Quintal, Almir Guineto, Jovelina Pérola Negra, Luiz Carlos da Vila or Jorge Aragão.

Carvalho was not only a visionary, but the link that united past, present and future.

“She does not let the past die, because she vindicates the works and the people of the past, and she builds the future, because she was always looking for new people”, Bruno points out.

In addition, the singer convinced her record company to record an album with that new sound that emerged in Ramos.

To be faithful to the spontaneous and street atmosphere of those musical meetings, Carvalho filled the studio with food, beer and friends.

This is how the album

De pé no chão

was born , which for Bruno marked the birth of

pagode

, a subgenre of samba that is still very popular today.

“That record is the

Chega de Saudade

of samba.

João Gilberto's classic record launched the

bossa nova

and

De pé no chão

launches the

pagode

movement , which introduces a new way of playing samba.

Bossa Nova lasted 15 years and died, but the

payment of

it lives until today, it lasted 40 years because it crossed generations”, says Bruno, who has just published

O Livro do Disco.

Beth Carvalho.

De pé no chão'

(Cobogó, in Portuguese), in which he dissects the inaugural album of the genre.

Carvalho died in 2019 after years with severe mobility problems and severe pain in the spine.

The last concert of her offered him lying on a sofa.

She did not give up on the stage until the last minute and her songs continue to play in the lively

samba rodas of

the bars and squares of Rio de Janeiro.

It is likely that many of the tourists who arrive in the city with

Garota de Ipanema

on their heads and are frustrated because there is not a trace of

bossa nova

end up with beer in hand next to a crowd, clapping and humming, without knowing it, some hit from Doña Beth.

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Source: elparis

All life articles on 2023-01-28

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