My friend and former colleague Bruno Verbeek keeps complaining that I only (or mostly) post ‘old stuff’ here at BMoF. He’s right of course, I am rather partial towards the 1970s… So last week on Facebook he asked me what I thought of the song ‘Laranja’, by the singer Maria Gadú; he was particularly impressed by the bass playing on the song. Maria Gadú is a young ‘rising star’ who has been heavily promoted by Caetano Veloso – and as I said to Bruno on FB, whenever Caetano Veloso decides that someone is going to be big, that someone IS going to be big. She’s good, no doubt about that, but maybe not as good as some people think she is.
Anyway, my reply to Bruno was that the bass in the song reminded me a lot of the Djavan songs of the 1990s. I was intrigued, and as it so happened I had the Maria Gadú cd in question at home. So I went to check: bingo! In the 1990s, Djavan’s bass player was Arthur Maia, internationally acknowledged as an absolutely terrific bass player; it’s fair to say that he’s one of the best bass players in Brazil of the last decades. Having attended countless Djavan concerts in the 1990s, I've had the pleasure of seeing Maia perform live many times -- lucky me.
You probably know where this is going: the bass player in ‘Laranja’ is none other than Arthur Maia himself! There you go… So, here is ‘Laranja’, to make Bruno happy, and then ‘Boa noite’, a Djavan song of 1992, where Maia’s talents are made abundantly evident. His solo work is pretty amazing too, so go check it out if you like what you hear here.
Recent Comments