Just found this amazing interview that Beck – an avid lover of Brazilian music – did with chief Tropicalist Caetano Veloso a year ago and which was now published on Beck´s website. In the interview Beck and Caetano speak on the ever increasing loudness in live performances and what João Gilberto did about it on his recent tour. Other topics are Bob Dylan´s love affair with Bossa Nova and how Beck was shocked when he found out that the cut-up aesthetics he created in some songs for his albums “Mellow Gold” or “Odelay” were already done by Os Mutantes 35 years earlier. This is one of the best talks on Brazilian music I read in a while. ESSENTIAL READING!!

I have a special, world exclusive pre-announcement for y´all to make and it´s about an upcoming release of mine called BOSSA DO MORRO. “Morro” means “hill” in Portugese, in Rio particulary, the hills are the cite where many of the city´s favelas are located. Thus BOSSA DO MORRO is a Baile Funk remix compilation I comissioned to celebrate this year´s 50th anniversary of Bossa Nova, the great musical genre that was birthed in Rio in the late 50s. When I first heard about this anniversary I immediately thought that there should be a Baile Funk Bossa Nova remix release. But soon I skipped the thought as I knew that it was quite impossible to get any original Bossa tracks for official remix use. Then I met Cristina Ruiz-Kellersmann, the Brazilian wife of Universal Jazz Germany boss Christian Kellersmann, and I suggested to her the compilation idea. She was enthusiastic about it and presented the idea to her husband who greatly supported the idea, together with Universal Jazz A+R Matthias Kuennecke. Eventually I was able to get access to parts of the Bossa Nova catalogue of Universal. Unfortunately not all of their prime tracks could be used, but BOSSA DO MORRO now features remixes of classic songs by João Gilberto, Tom Jobim, Sergio Mendes and Klaus Doldinger amongst others. The remixes are by Rio´s finest DJs such as DJ Amazing Clay, DJ Edgar, DJ Nazz, DJ Marrentinho, DJ Fu, DJ Dinho and a few others. The results are simply amazing. Think of “Girl From Ipanema” with a Miami Bass Beat. Think of “Insensatez” with a Tamborzão. It´s crazy. And I can assure you that there was a never a similar project like this released in Brazil.

How come that todays hottest Rio Funk DJs and producers never touched the big music legacy from their very own city? Well, there´s various reasons. For Cariocas (=the people from Rio) Bossa is the music made by the 1950´s bobos – the bohemian bourgeoise which hung out in Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon. These are area that are culturally and socially far away from the grim reality in the favelas. But it´s not only this barrier that hardly produced any Bossa-Baile Funk tracks so far (except for DJ Sandrinho´s famous “Funk Bossanova”). For the Rio funk DJ culture, Bossa´s just been far from being cool or dope , it´s music to which you can´t really grind your teenage booty to. Thus hardly any funk DJ samples MPB (=Musica Popular Do Brasil) or 1950s, 1960s Brazilian music. To Funk DJs, music from the USA or Europe is cool to sample, but certainly not the music that their grandma´s or parents were listening to. So BOSSA DO MORRO is truly a debut piece. The compilation not only cultivates the first Bossa/Baile Funk pairing, it´s a compilation that probably will be considered blasphemic in Brazil, where the music from the favelas is largely still considered trash. But maybe – hopefully – this image will get a slight correction when people will finally hear that even the most crude MPC based arrangement with a chunky Tamborzão beat can pefectly support a subtle song by Tom Jobim.

Watch out for the full compilation, scheduled for an October 17th release on both vinyl and CD through Universal Jazz Germany. A 12″ vinyl pre-release with four tracks will be released mid September. Watch this space for some more news (sorry I cant give you any free downloads of this project).