The Remarkable Rodrigo Amarante
I was floating in and out of sleep this morning when I heard a short snippet of a song in my head. There wasn’t enough to pin point which song, but enough to know it was one I loved. I wanted to recall the artist or name so I could listen later, but then had a nervous moment as I started scrolling through songs in my mind…would the act of trying to remember make me lose the bit of melody altogether? Would it be like trying to stay awake within a lucid dream where the harder you try to hold it, the more quickly it slips away?
But lucky for me, it finally came. The song was The Ribbon, by Rodrigo Amarante:
Rodrigo’s album, Cavalo, is one of my favorites of the decade. If you’re curious, the part of the song that roused me from my sleep is from 1:53 to 1:57…four brief seconds of a low-burning sonic swirl. When you listen to the song as a whole, that ambient swirl is a striking contrast to the unadorned and plaintive vocal. The use of space between the sonic elements really characterizes the album. The instrumentation and recording technique throughout is phenomenally beautiful. It’s tastefully appointed like the home of a great architect.
Since I was now fully awake thinking about the album, I started to wonder about the man. I’ve seen him playing with some of my favorites, like Moreno Velosa, another Brazilian musician who I love. (Moreno also happens to be the son of the famous Caetano Velosa who is a god to me.) He also collaborates with Devandra Banhart, a brilliant visual and musical artist (and Natalie Portman ex-boyfriend). And I’m sure I’ll find other connections.
So to think that Rodrigo travels in these circles, that he sings fluidly in four different languages, is objectively quite handsome…I thought “this guy must be a real asshole.” No way someone like this would wind up being principled, intellectually curious, humble, or kind.
I often fear my perceived greatness of someone like Rodrigo will be shattered by the revelation of an unseemly fact, like the guy is a racist, or misogynistic, or a MAGA supporter. It makes me sometimes hesitate to seek out more information, to avoid dispelling my myth. But seeing as I was on the couch with my phone (having fallen asleep there after returning from a party the night before), I figured I would look for an interview…
I was pleasantly surprised to find that he seems like a thoughtful and down-to-earth guy. He talks about writing the theme song to Narcos, Tuyos, which he may be best known for. Btw, I bet you’ll be surprised by the process and thinking behind how he wrote that song.
He also talks about the sadness of being homesick (Soldade), the role of civil discourse in navigating these overheated times where many representative democracies have taken a turn towards the extreme right, and about writing a song to try and persuade his father not to vote for Jair Bolsonaro, the new far-right president of Brazil. (I also have very different political views than my father, but unfortunately we’ve never found a way to talk about things in a dispassionate and substantive way, so we simply avoid the topic. I was well into my thirties before I really made peace with it.)
I first stumbled across Rodrigo via one of my favorite sites, La Blogotethèque. I’m always surprised how few people know of this gem. IMO La Blogotethèque is a real (and free) service to humanity and the arts. It’s a rich mine of rare and intimate performances from some of the greatest artists of our time. There are a lot of not-so-great performances as well, so it’s like a good book store. You need to do a little digging.
It was on one of those digs, I found this:
The first song is Irene, and the second you’ll recognize from earlier as The Ribbon. Rodrigo’s live performances are so good that even had the album not been so fantastic, I’d still be a fan.
One of the next songs I’m learning to play is Mon Nom. Played live, the song is delicate. Almost pretty. It doesn’t capture the shift in momentum and emotion of the song’s chorus the way the album recording does. And then there are those genius horns later in the song, which are also sprinkled throughout the album.
There are a lot of wonderful live performances to see. In particular, I like the KEXP one, which I’ve put towards the end of this post. I could compile a bunch more here, and maybe I will a little later. But for now, I’ll leave you with one last gem, Quem me Dera.
My introduction to bossa nova and tropicalismo happened in my early 20s. Not sure how I missed out for so long, but I clearly remember how the hair on my arms stood when I heard the swung rhythm and crisp nylon string chords, and Caetano’s voice. I can’t be 100% sure the song was Quem me Dera, but it doesn’t matter. Now I have Brazilian music in my life:
So I was tickled to find this version done by both Devendra and Rodrigo:
If you’re impatient, you can jump to 1:08 where it really starts. It’s a playful take on the original, with a disco rhythm that might be corny if the song weren’t such a classic. And the last minute of the song is an homage of references to classic Brazillian songs. They’re little snippets all-swirled together like a Beatlesque psychedelic passage. They’re sort of like the snippet that I awoke to this morning and motivated this blog post. So I’m off now to see if I can remember each of these references and rediscover more of the music that I love so much.
……….
[Update] Okay, so here’s that KEXP performance:
And here is the Moreno Velosa tune, Coisa Bao, where you can see Rodrigo working on the recording with the band. It’s a simple little ditty. I love the vibrato on the guitar. Fun fact: this was one of the first tunes Lily improvised along with me on the piano. I played the chords — a simple A, Bm, E — and she wandered up and down on the keys, figured out which ones sounded right and wrong, and then continued to explore: