Why is Fernanda Abreu, 34, stark naked on the cover of her latest album? The Carioca (from Rio) singer, composer and ballerina certainly didn't need all the extra publicity to sell her music. Da Lata, her latest CD, is getting rave reviews, but so did her previous work. So, Fernandinha, as she is called since she became the teens' muse more than ten years ago as crooner for Rio's band Blitz, answers the question about her bare-it-all attitude: "After two records I feel free to do whatever I please, including getting naked."
She has never been so busy. Her agenda is full seven days a week. Everybody promoting a party all over Brazil seems to want to book her, since she sings a kind of rhythm that doesn't let anyone stay quiet. The singer doesn't do workout per se, but the dance classes that she continually takes take care of the exercise she needs. And in the last three years she is always getting an excuse to go back home for another kind of exercise, being with Sofia, the three-year old daughter she had with graphic artist Luiz Stein, her companion for 15 years.
Right now Fernanda is on a tour of Brazil to spread the word on Da Lata. The album's name has given place to many interpretations. Literally it means "of the can" but it is also a slang expression meaning of the best quality. Another explanation is that the songs on the album have a funky style and were inspired by tunes composed in Rio's slums where pans and pots are used as percussion instruments.
The singer has talked about this, "The can is a material that is not very noble, but it can be recycled. It works as Brazil itself, there's an intrinsic optimism." Curiously, the expression "da lata" was created at the end of the 80's. After being spotted by Rio's maritime police, the ship Solana Star threw overboard a shipment of marijuana. The product, which was of very good quality, had been kept in cans that ended up on the beach and were caught and consumed by the population.
The composer believes that this story and the use of cans to make music are responsible for Rio's taste. "In the favelas (shanty towns), the first percussion instrument is the pan," observes Fernanda. "The houses they live in, the suburban trains they catch to go to work, everything is made of can." "Da Lata" is also a love anthem to the diversity of Rio, a place Fernanda loves passionately. She has been so much in tune with the city that many consider her the quintessential Carioca. "Rio is a symbol of extreme kindness and cultural tolerance. We don't have here Chinatown, Little Italy or the Jewish neighborhood. Rio receives with open arms axé music, rock, pop, pagode, charm and funk and all of them live in harmony."
And she continues, "I've been in favelas many times and people's creativity has always impressed me there. The future of the Brazilian Pop Music depends on the absorption by the cultural industry of everything that happens in the slums. That's what happened when samba was born. Samba composers were marginalized and persecuted, but samba ended up becoming synonymous with Brazil."
Fernanda Sampaio de Lacerda Abreu has always had an exhibitionist side. "Since early childhood I used to give domestic shows," she revealed recently. "My parents were prepared to have an artist daughter." The father, an architect, was born in Portugal, the mother was a librarian. Born in the middle-class neighborhood of Botafogo, the singer has always attended public school.
Her love for dance came about by necessity. It was a pediatrician who advised her parents to get her to ballet to correct a problem young Fernanda had in her kneecap. She kept going to dance class even when the medical need had ended. Fan of painting, she went to Architecture school, but all the calculations scared her off. She changed to Sociology at PUC, the Catholic University in Rio, studied it for three years, but never finished college. Her ability on the dance floor made her very popular among the teens her age in the school balls. All of this was happening during the golden era of disco music. Fernanda's chance to work on the stage, however, came about when singer
Marcia Bulcco, who was forming rock band Blitz with underground-theater actor Evandro Mesquita, heard her singing. She didn't think twice to accept the invitation to be part of the band and school was abandoned for good. Fernandinha already had by then that raspy voice, those thick thighs, that killing smile and that swing that would make her very soon the queen of disco, a sex-symbol, and an icon of the 80's.
Blitz became a huge success after 1982 when the single "Você não soube me amar" ("You didn't know how to love me") sold more than 700,000 copies. From underground music, rock became the musical sensation in Brazil, opening the doors for such names as Lulu Santos, Barão Vermelho and Kid Abelha. Blitz's songs made people dance, smile and many times think with their provoking and satirical lyrics.
By 1986 Abreu had turned over a new leaf on life. She left Blitz and took a four-year break for some internal reengineering. She dedicated herself to study singing and guitar. And came back with her first solo album, a disco music love declaration called Sla Radical Dance Disco Club produced by Herbert Vianna, a friend who was a member of the Paralamas do Sucesso band. Commenting about the intolerance of the Brazilian elite towards disco, the composer said recently about Sla Radical: "I am for the left that fights, but I don't abdicate from pleasure. With this album I wanted to show Brazil that the head is not separated from the body."
Fernanda has always been considered dance music diva. But since the beginning she has secured her own important place in an area in which composers and interpreters are legion and rarely noticed. "Since I don't sing rock or MPB (Brazilian popular music) the critics say I do dance music. I prefer to call it dancing music."
On her second CD, Sla 2: Be Sample, from 1992, the singer had already started to add a pinch of Brazilian sound, especially samba. Da Lata was a natural progression in the same direction of giving a Brazilian soul to dance music. The record is able to graciously mix the favela's samba, with the chants from Candomblé temples and the most sophisticated instruments and recording processes.
In "Garota Sangue Bom" ("Nice Girl", literally "Good Blood Girl") Fernanda praises the Carioca woman swing singing, "Junto com a boca/ vem a coxa debochando/ no compasso do escândalo dançante" ("Together with the mouth/ Comes the thigh poking fun/ in the rhythm of the dancing scandal). And cuts like "Tudo Vale a Pena" ("Everything is Worthwhile") or "Veneno da Lata" ("The Best Kind of Poison") talking about the poor life in the hills of Rio are a perfect example of world music, integrating the sacred and the profane, the primitive with high tech.
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