BIA / “Araurum Kim Kim”

 

[When] my parents moved from Brazil, I was only three years old…. When our family went back to Brazil, I was twelve. I remember a few things from Chile and Peru, but really I was too small to have very precise memories. But from those early years I learned Spanish as a second language, and started to love South American music and poetry.  My parents moved to Portugal when I was seven, and so we lived there for five years. I remember I liked that country very, very much, and I love to sing a fado from time to time in my concerts.

When I was 19, and in university studying journalism, I wanted to travel Europe for a year, as many students do. To see different cultures and learn better English and French and Spanish. I hadn’t planned at all to stay so many years.

I went to Portugal, Spain, Amsterdam, Switzerland and finally the Canary [Islands]. I was not alone but with friends, and it was mostly an adventure and fun to go over places we had heard about. We felt free to discover the world, that’s the wonderful thing about being young and curious.
—Bia, from ‘Interview For Japan’

 
‘World Music’ is a bland and misleading, although convenient, way to categorize the vast array of music recorded by artists from every corner of the globe, from countries both big and small, but in the case of young Brazilian singer-songwriter Bïa, the phrase actually might be appropriate. Bïa was born in Brazil, grew up in Chile, Peru and Portugal, studied in France and makes her home in Montreal. She sings fluently in Portuguese, French, Spanish and English.
bia01.jpg

Listening to a Bïa album can be like taking an auditory tour of the Romance Languages, indeed she sometimes translates lyrics herself: “I love to transform songs,” she says. “Turn Brazilian songs into French and vice-versa. I do this out of love.” But for our feature selection, “Araurum Kim Kim,” the young singer sticks with the languages in which composer Adão Xalebaradã wrote it, Brazilian Portuguese along with some Yoruba phrases here and there.

 

200px-Berimbau.jpg 

If there ever was a question about the direct connection between Brazil and Africa, recordings like “Araurum Kim Kim” provide an emphatic answer. From the opening hum of the berimbau (the single-stringed instrument which makes that distinctively ‘Brazilian’ buzzing echo) through the last plucked notes of the kora (a 21-stringed instrument that looks like an oversized banjo and sounds like a harp), “Araurum Kim Kim” is infused with a deep sense of Africa-derived mysticism and spirituality. Bïa’s luminous voice and precise phrasing is an ideal contrast to the thudding bass drums and insistent percussion of the accompaniment; like incense smoke wafting through the rooms of a home, the young singer’s beautiful Brazilian lilt and Adão’s poetic lyrics drift through the consciousness of the listener. “Eu sou doce come mel,”  she sings. “Pôcio Pilatos lavou a mão. Eu sou muito antes de Tutankâmon.” (“I am sweet as honey / Pontius Pilate washed my hands / I am older than Tutankhamen.”)

While “Araurum” is the high-point for me, Sources has quite a few other excellent tracks—so how’s about a bonus or two? “Complainte Africaine” drifts along at a dreamlike tempo—no accident considering that the lyrics (by French composer Jean Duino) tell the story of white man who wakes up one morning as an African aboard a slave ship. “Sonho Meu,” a Brazilian classic written by Dona Ivonne Lara, one of the earliest female samba composers, is about a dream as well, but a different kind of dream. It’s a saudade-infused love song, in which the narrator dreams each night of a faraway lover, but each morning wakes alone to face the “cold, melancholy dawn.” The best-known version of “Sonho Meu”—the one that Bïa’s version is closely modeled after—is the duo-recording by Bahians Gal Costa and Maria Bethânia. Bïa’s version of “Sonho Meu” is also a duet; she performs Gal Costa’s parts herself but, interestingly enough, taps a male singer, Rolando Faria, to perform the low-voiced Maria Bethânia’s verses. (Maria is one of those female vocalists like Cuba’s Bobi Céspedes, Cabo Verde’s Cesária Évora or Brazil’s own Virgínia Rodrigues whose voices are so deep and powerful that their singing is sometimes mistaken for that of a man.)

—Mtume ya Salaam

Opening quote taken from an interview with Bïa at http://www.biamusik.com/presentation/interview01.htm

Bonus tracks:

Bïa - “Complainte Africaine” from Sources (2000, Saravah)
Bïa - “Sonho Meu” from Sources (2000)
Maria Bethânia & Gal Costa – “Sonho Meu” from Alibi (Verve, 1978)


          A classic/classy Brazilian voice         

Bïa is precisely the type of post-bossa nova voice that people invariably associate with Brazil, except there is always something a little different going on other than ingenue innocent sweetness.

180px-KoraDiagram.gif 

When Mtume played "Araurum Kim Kim" for me, the use of the kora in the mix jumped out at me as soon as I heard it. I remember Mtume asking me had I heard of her before, I said no, but that I could hear that she had big ears in how she was arranging the music and the interesting combination of instruments and rhythms she used in what seemed on the surface to be easy listening music.

After hearing the single, I went on a search and found two of her albums. Hopefully she will keep growing and mature into a soulful chanteuse of saudade, much as the grand dame of Bahia song, Maria Bethânia, whose voice is ocean deep. But even if she stops here, Bïa has made a statement.

Her sense of melody is very strong, plus her melodies are buoyed by a wonderfully keen rhythmic sense. On top of all of that she has excellent audio production. This is a potent brew, good (as they say) to the last drop.

—Kalamu ya Salaam

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 18th, 2005 at 12:02 am and is filed under Contemporary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


4 Responses to “BIA / “Araurum Kim Kim””

luna Says:
September 18th, 2005 at 12:07 pm

i cannot right click on the title below the album cover image anymore i have a pc…pls help?!! thank yall peace & love

 

          mp3 downloads are temporarily down          

we feel your pain, but unfortunately it will take another week before we can fix the download problem.  normally, mtume, kalamu and bryan are all in the same city—so when there is a problem, we can easily solve it. however, katrina has created major problems for us. bryan, who is our web designer and major problem fixer, is on the road between miami and dallas. all the paperwork and high-level pass codes are back in new orleans (hopefully, not underwater). what all that means is that it’s going to take us a minute to reconstruct and then be able to troubleshoot and solve the mp3 problem.

relief soon come… (that’s a bit of macabre humor, if you don’t get it, don’t worry about it.)

our goal is to be fully operational by next week. meanwhile, please enjoy the jukebox. 

—kalamu 


Lynn Says:
September 19th, 2005 at 9:53 am

Kalamu and Mtume,

I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the Bia selections this week.

I find myself looking forward to BOL every week and I figured I should tell y’all that I think the site is not only cool, but really important. Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like BOL connects me with music in a way that would never happen on my own. I love good music, but I don’t “pursue” it like talking about. There are just too many other things at the top of my priority list, which, up ’till now, has meant that unless I happened to read something about somebody doing beautiful, interesting things with music or unless somebody handed me a CD and said: “here, listen to this,” my musical knowledge was largely dependent on commercial radio (shudder) or what I heard at Kalamu’s office in Treme. Plus, when I moved to New York four years ago and stopped driving, I had little reason to turn on the radio. The results of all that being the purchase of maybe three CDs in the past two years (especially since I cancelled that BMG Music club subscription!). At home, there’s a pile of BMG CDs, 80 percent of which don’t get played, and 10 percent of which get played the hell out. And while I love that 10 percent — mostly Nina Simone, Cassandra Wilson, that Al Green anthology in the white leather case, and the soundtrack from “Frida” — it’s nice to think I might be able to expand that glorious repertoire and venture into music buying again without fear of the hoodwink CD (you know the one, the artist got one good song so you think you want a whole CD of his/her music only to find out $17 later that you been had)…

Anyway, keep it up.

Lynn


Thierry Says:
September 19th, 2005 at 9:34 pm

Thanks a lot for this wonderful site. I enjoy very much your selections. It’s great if you can fix the problem with downloads (and it would be nice to put the previous weeks downloads on line as well). 

All the best from France. Th.

Johnathan James Says:
September 20th, 2005 at 4:56 pm

I’ve always thought World Music was such a disrespectful name for such a beautiful genre of music. Its in the same vein as a person from China or Africa coming to this country, and then being named Jack or Sam or something like that because its what Western Culture can relate to. In general, however, I am okay with music like Bia’s being called World Music. That just means its not American music, and for the forseeable future will not be assimilated as Jazz and Hip Hop have been.

Thank you for bringing Bia to my attention. I enjoy checking into BOL, and always enjoy the music, even if I’m not familiar with it, as is often the case.

Hax.


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