Native song
Ihu in the Kamayurá Indian language means everything you learn by hearing.
Ihu Todos os Sons (Ihu All the Sounds) is also the name of
Marlui Miranda‘s latest CD release. An expert in Brazilian indigenous music, Miranda, who
has received a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation, for 17 years has been researching the subject. In this
17-track recording, the singer-researcher with a little hand from Gilberto Gil brings to life the chants of several Amazon Indian nations including the Kayapó, the Nhambikwara, the Yanomami, the Tukano and the Suyá. Released last year in Brazil, Ihu was acclaimed by critics who considered it one of the best productions of the year. The CD is being released by New York’s Blue Jackel Entertainment. This new label has also just released
Tony Mola‘s Bragadá, an album
it presents as the newest wave in Brazilian music with Bahian rhythms blending with rap, salsa, Jamaican ragamuffin, samba and orixá rhythms. Mola cofounded Timbalada with Carlinhos Brown.
Two parties
As it happens every September for 12 years now hundreds of thousands of Brazilians and Brazil lovers went
September 1st , a Sunday, to New York’s Litte Brazil Street (also known as
46th St.) to celebrate the Brazilian Independence
Day. Brazilian food, culture and music were served in abundance in a party promoted by
The Brasilians newspaper and small businesses. Representatives from the Brazilian consulate in New York were nowhere to be seen. They
would throw their own party on Friday, September 6, one day before Independence Day. Only VIPs were invited to this
bash that happened at the exclusive Plaza Hotel. Oddly enough the invitation, which had to be handed out at the
Plaza, started with “The Consulate General of Brazil in New York and Republic National Bank of New York request
the pleasure of your company…” hinting that the official celebration of Brazil’s biggest national date was
privately financed. What’s a poor consulate to do? Celebrate parsimoniously inside the consulate itself? Or would it be
asking too much for an organization that has been delaying the payment of its own workers for months on end?
Channel 16 will this month be showing interviews with Brazilian Indian leaders and showcase Brazil’s Northeast. The states
to be highlighted are Sergipe, Fortaleza, Bahia, Ceará and Pernambuco. The talks with the Indians were produced by
the Amanaka’a Amazon Network and they will be complemented by material shot in the Amazon showing the
inundated forests of Mamirauá.