New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'O malandro' (Mack the Knife)

I’m in Munich at the moment visiting the MCMP, but heading back home tonight after an European tour which included London, Prague and Munich. I like to be inspired by the places I visit for my BMoF selection (like last week with a London-inspired post), so following this principle, I was looking for something German-inspired to post. There are not that many salient connections between Brazilian and German music, but there is at least one interesting case. In 1978, Chico Buarque composed the musical Ópera do Malandro, inspired by Bertold Brecht’s The Three Penny Opera and John Gray’s Beggar’s Opera, which was then released in record form in 1979. Most of the songs are original compositions, but the opening song is a samba rendition of ‘Mack the knife’ (or ‘Die Moritat von Mackie Messer’) by Brecht and Weill. So here is ‘O malandro’, sung by the vocal group MPB-4. It is yet another proof of how much of a great, timeless song it is in that it allows for so many different interpretations. (I'm also a big fan of the Ella Fitzgerald version, here live in Berlin. UPDATE: Eric reminds me that he posted before on the great Ella and the fellas.)

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'London, London'

By the time this goes online, I’ll be enjoying a long weekend in London with my family. And while this will likely come across as rather predictable, I just can’t help help myself: I’m posting ‘London, London’, by Caetano Veloso. It is a song from his 1971 album recorded in England, where he lived in exile for about three years after having spent several months in prison as an ‘enemy’ of the military dictatorship in power at the time. Until moving to England in 1969, Caetano’s knowledge of English was virtually non-existent, and yet in this period he regularly composed and recorded songs in English, including ‘London, London’.

The whole album, which is one of my favorites by him, revolves around what it feels like to be in exile: the thankfulness for being received in a foreign country, but also the deep, deep nostalgia (saudade!), the longing for his home. My favorite song of the album is actually 'If you hold a stone' (which soothed many moments of deep nostalgia in yours truly as well), and ‘London, London’ became a bit overplayed when it was recorded by a very successful (but truly horrible) pop band in the 1980s. And yet, it is a beautiful, delicate song. This particular video I'm posting (with tacky pictures of London in the backgroud) also features the lyrics in English, so you can see for yourself that Caetano was already a rather accomplished lyrics writer in English after only 2 years or so of familiarity with the language.

Brazilian music on Fridays: Paulo Vanzolini

One of the greatest samba composers of all times, Paulo Vanzolini, passed away a few days ago, aged 89. He is the composer of classics such as ‘Ronda’ (1951), ‘Volta por cima’ (1959), and ‘Boca da noite’ (1969), songs which any self-respecting Brazilian can sing without missing a beat, and which have been recorded by all the great singers. What is equally remarkable about Vanzolini is that he combined his music career with a highly successful academic career as a zoologist. Among other feats, he was the director of the Zoology Museum of the University of São Paulo from 1963 to 1993, and even after his retirement continued to do research at the museum virtually until his death. (I’m sure this combination of excellence in music and science will make a number of readers somewhat jealous.)

Brazilian music on Fridays: ‘Só tinha de ser com você’

Busy times (and slow internet…) here at Lund, where I am attending the awesome G.I.R.L. conference. So a quick BMoF with a bossa nova classic, ‘Só tinha de ser com você’, here in the Elis Regina & Tom Jobim version. It is one of my favorite songs of their legendary duo album Elis & Tom (1974), also containing other jewels such as ‘Águas de março’.

Brazilian music on Fridays: Villa-Lobos

Here's something quite different today! Today I’m posting what is perhaps the most famous classical music piece composed by a Brazilian, namely ‘Trenzinho Caipira’, the Tocata of the second movement of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras. It was composed in 1930, and the whole idea is to emulate the noises made by a train by means of the instruments in the orchestra. Almost as famous is the fifth movement of the same Bachianas, ‘Aria’, here sung by Kiri te Kanawa. Villa-Lobos is without a doubt the best-known Brazilian classical composer thus far, and is notable in particular for incorporating traditional folk rhythms and melodies into his music. 

(Apologies for the short post today: I'm in the middle of the Groningen Graduate Conference at the moment.)

Brazilian music on Fridays: Cartola

Today again a ‘normal’ BMoF, rather than the ‘on the road’ installments of the last two weeks. I must say however that it was a very pleasant surprise to hear from a number of people at the APA in San Francisco that they are fans of Brazilian music in general and of BMoF in particular. This definitely boosts my enthusiasm for this weekly commitment!

Today I want to post a couple of songs by Cartola (Portuguese for top hat). Cartola is widely recognized as one of the greatest samba musicians and composers of all times (together with others such as Noel Rosa and Paulinho da Viola). He was born at the beginning of the 20^th century, and led a rather eventful life. A typical bohemian, he was one of the founders of the Mangueira samba school in Rio, and lived most of his life in the Mangueira favela (shantytown). In the 1930s he was a widely recognized and successful musician, but in the 1940s his life took the wrong turn due to illness and other infortunes. Little is known about what exactly happened to him then, but he simply ‘disappeared’ from the musical scene, taking up the odd job as car washer or construction worker. He was ‘rediscovered’ in 1957 by a then-famous journalist (Sergio Porto), who began to promote Cartola again as a musician and composer. However, it was only in the 1970s, when Cartola was past 60 years old, that he became again a true musical institution, recording his very first album in 1974 and composing many of the songs he is famous for. He died in 1980, but since then his songs are among the best known classics of Brazilian folk music, and are regularly recorded by all kinds of high-profile singers (including numerous tribute albums).

Brazilian music on Fridays: Maria Rita

I’m in Rio de Janeiro at the moment for UNILOG. I had hoped to be able to post something ‘fresh from the over’, but I’ve been too busy conferencing. So instead I will post a couple of songs by singer Maria Rita. (Ed Zalta, a big fan of Maria Rita, is also here, and this is what made me think of her for this week’s BMoF.) As some readers may know, she is the daughter of the legendary Elis Regina, but her success should in no way be credited exclusively to her illustrious genealogy (her father is pianist Cesar Camargo Mariano).

Her 2003 debut album has been her most successful one so far, but she has produced a constant stream of good music since. Her 2007 album Samba Meu also received lots of love, and last year she performed tribute concerts to her mother, 30 years after her premature death. The concerts have now become the CD/DVD Redescobrir. So I’m posting ‘Cara valente’, my favorite track from her debut album, and ‘O bebado e o equilibrista’ from Redescobrir, one of Elis Regina’s best known songs. (I wonder how many readers will now join Ed Zalta in Maria Rita's fanclub.)

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Saidera'

I’m in San Francisco for the APA at the moment, thankfully with good internet connection but very little time for anything other than socializing, ahem, I mean, attending interesting philosophy talks. I was tempted to skip BMoF this week, but then someone came to me this afternoon to say that he’s a big fan of BMoF (sorry, I didn’t catch your name!). So thanks to this kind soul, there will be BMoF this week after all…

 I’m posting a song by the band Skank, who started out as a ska/reggae band but in the meantime has experimented with different styles. This song, ‘Saidera’ (meaning: one for the road, the last drink of the night), is from their 1998 album Siderado. It’s all very pop-ish, but in my opinion very enjoyable – I danced to this particular song countless times back in the day. I haven’t been able to find the full studio version of this song, so here is a partial version and below a live version.

And now, on to give my talk!

Brazilian music on Fridays: Krig-ha, Bandolo!

Georgetown philosopher Bryce Huebner informed me via Twitter yesterday that he was listening to Krig-ha, Bandolo! (1973), the legendary first solo album by the legendary Raul Seixas. (I was convinced that I had already written a BMoF on Raul Seixas, but now I can’t find it, so probably not then.) In turn, Bryce was reminded of the album by Boston University philosopher Aaron Garrett – great to see all these philosophers with such exquisite musical taste! So to ensure that Krig-ha, Bandolo! becomes even more popular among my fellow philosophers, here are two of its classics: ‘Mosca na Sopa’ and ‘Metamorfose Ambulante’. The whole album is quite experimental, with psychedelic undertones. ‘Mosca’, for example, mixes capoeira beats with classic rock’n’roll (mixing Brazilian regional beats with rock is a constant theme in his music).

Raul Seixas died prematurely in 1989, but remains extremely popular among Brazilian hippies, psychedelics, mystics, rockers etc. Every year on his birthday (June 28^th), legions of fans throw a parade in his honor in Sao Paulo. It is perhaps hard to appreciate the significance of his music out of this broader context, but I bet many other philosophers will follow Bryce and Aaron’s lead and become Raul Seixas enthusiasts. Raul was himself very interested in philosophy, with a clear mystical bent. It is perhaps also worth noticing that one of his main collaborators early in his career was Paulo Coelho -- yes, that Paulo Coelho. Some of Raul's greatest songs were co-written with Coelho (e.g. 5 of the songs in Krig-ha, Bandolo!); well, I guess it's fair to say he should have kept it to song-writing... Anyhow, without further ado, here is Raul.

Brazilian music on Fridays: Djavan in mellow mode

Last year I posted a few songs (all of them of the funky, swingy persuation) by Djavan, one of my very favorite Brazilian singers. But Djavan is also a master of beautiful, emotional mellow songs, and today I'll post two of my favorites: 'Pétala' (1982) and 'Faltando um pedaço' (1980). (Never mind the 'slide shows' accompanying them on youtube...)

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Lingua'

(Minimalistic BMoF today.) I haven't posted a song by Caetano Veloso in ages, I'm sure the Caetano fans are wondering what is going on. So today I'm posting 'Lingua', from his 1984 album Velo -- a rap avant la lettre, and a duo with the incomparable Elza Soares. One of the best lines: "If you have an incredible idea/it is best to write a song/it's been proved that it is only possible to philosophyze in German."

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Trem Azul'

I’ve mentioned a couple of times before that Clube da Esquina is possibly my very favorite Brazilian album of all times. It is one of those rare albums which is a truly coherent whole, while also having an amazing number of individually spectacular songs, like ‘Cravo e canela’, ‘Me deixa em paz’ and so many others. One of them is the now classic ‘Trem azul’. Besides the original version in Clube da Esquina, it has been recorded by a number of musicians of the magnitude of Elis Regina (who is considered by many as the greatest female Brazilian singer of all times) and Tom Jobim. Each version is very different from the others, and I really cannot make up my mind as to which one I like best.

Fortunately, there is no need to make up my mind, and I can post as many versions as I want here at BMoF! So here are the ones I like best: the original one, sung by Lo Borges; Elis Regina’s version, here in a recording for a TV show in 1981, incidentally one of her very last performances caught on video before her premature death (check here for her studio version); and Tom Jobim’s version, curiously also recorded in his last album, Antonio Brasileiro (1994). Tom Jobim’s version is (mostly) in English, so for once you don’t have to be left to wonder what the lyrics are all about (the Enlighs translation follows the original text fairly closely).

Brazilian music on Fridays: Ira!

As I write this, I am mustering the courage to go pack, as tomorrow (that is, today for you, dear reader) we are off for our yearly ski vacation. To top it up, today (again, MY today -- thinking of Predelli here) is my birthday, and somehow I think it is rather unfair that I have to spend my birthday packing. But anyway, trying to get myself in a birthday-ish spirit, today I’m posting ‘Envelheço na cidade’, by the 1980s rock band Ira! (Wrath! -- the name was also inspired by the Irish IRA), which was quite a hit among the kool kids back in the 1980s. The chorus goes ‘Happy birthday/I age in the city’, and I remember listening to it and realizing for the first time that there was a connection between aging and having a birthday! The innocence of a 10 year-old facing the existential malaise of the human condition… And since I’m at it, let me also post ‘Flores em voce’, the other big hit from the same 1986 album by Ira! -- a rather unusual song, with a string quartet as the only featured instruments.

(BMoF will take a break next week.)

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Space Oddity'

It's Friday, but somehow I'm not much in a Friday-ish mood, after a week which included a stomach flu and some other small annoyances. So it's a bit difficult to find inspiration for BMoF today, but somehow I had to think of Seu Jorge's hilarious versions of David Bowie songs in The Life Aquatic, one of the characteristically bizarre Wes Anderson creations. Seu Jorge (who is also an actor, having performed for example in City of God) is the weird guy on Zissou's boat whose sole contribution to the operations seems to be to provide musical entertainment with his strange renditions of Bowie songs in Portuguese.

In the spirit of my somewhat melancholic Friday today, here's 'Space Oddity'. If you are curious, check this youtube channel for the full collection of Bowie/Seu Jorge songs.

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Só sei dançar com você'

There was much love for my post on Tulipa Ruiz of last week. So here's another sample of her awesomeness, 'Só sei dançar com você', in two versions: the official album version, and an a capella version with Criolo, who as some readers may recall is also one of my current favorites.

Brazilian music on Fridays: Tulipa Ruiz

One of the darlings of current Brazilian ‘Indie’ music (if there is such a thing…) is Tulipa Ruiz. I’ve been following her career for a while (on the advice of my friend Alexandre Cerqueira, who is a friend and big van of Tulipa). On the ‘Best of’ lists of Rolling Stone Brasil for 2012, her new album Tudo Tanto came as no. 2, and in the song ranking she has ‘Dois cafes’ at no. 5 (in a duo with Lulu Santos, a giant of Brazilian pop music and an excellent guitar player), and ‘É’ at no. 15. Tulipa Ruiz’s music is not always of easy assimilation; I must admit that it took me a while to get into the spirit. On the other hand, this also means that her music is original, unexpected, and the more you listen to it, the more you like it.

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Mama Africa'

Busy week here, so short BMoF. Today I'm posting 'Mama Africa', a song of the mid-1990s by Chico Cesar, a very cool singer from the state of Paraiba. It's a good example of Brazilian Reggae, and it's a song I danced to at many a party back in the 1990s. Perfect for the start of this cold (in the Netherlands at least) weekend!

Brazilian music on Fridays: best of 2012

Rolling Stone Brasil has now released its much-waited (by me, in any case) ‘Best of 2012’ lists: the 10 best records, and the 10 best tracks. Not that I’m a ranking fanatic, but these lists allow me to discover stuff I knew nothing about and thus stay more or less abreast of the latest developments in Brazilian music. And indeed, there are lots of musicians on these two lists that I had never heard of, and from a brief inspection some of them very promising.

The number one track is the Racionais MC song I posted last week (sorry dmf, I know you were not impressed…), but otherwise most of the ‘winners’ have not been BMoF guests so far. Some exceptions are Caetano Veloso (new record ranked as best of the year, in the year he turned 70!) and CéU. I still have lots of work to do to listen to all this new stuff, but for now let me post three songs: ‘Essa é pra tocar no baile’ by BNegão & Os Seletores de Frequência (4^th in the song ranking, 3^rd in the album ranking), ‘Falta de ar’ by CéU, (4^th in album ranking) and ‘A Bossa Nova é foda’ by Caetano Veloso (1^st in album ranking, ^3rd in song ranking).

Brazilian music on Fridays: best videoclips of 2012

I’m waiting for Rolling Stone Brasil’s list of best albums of 2012 to comment on it and post some of my favorite songs of the year. But they have already posted a list of the best videoclips of 2012, and among those there are two videos by previous BMoF ‘guests’: ‘Mariô’, one of the many great tracks from Criolo’s 2011 album Nó na Orelha, and ‘Mil faces de um homem leal (Marighella)’ by Racionais MC. The Racionais MC clip is a particularly special event, as it is their first new track in 10 years, en route for a new album (recall that Racionais MC is without exaggeration the most important Brazilian rap band of all times). It is part of the soundtrack of the documentary on Carlos Marighella, a Marxist revolutionary and opponent of the Brazilian military dictatorship in the 1960s. The Racionais MC videoclip was chosen as ‘video of the year’ by MTV Brazil.

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Taj Mahal' by Adriana Partimpim

Here’s a short BMoF, as by the time this goes online I’ll be enjoying a short city break in Brussels with my family. Now, one of the CDs we got for Xmas this year (obrigada, Malu!) is the latest by Adriana Partimpim, aka Adriana Calcanhotto. I’ve posted some of her songs before, and I love both her work for adults as well as her work for children (for which she adopts the Partimpim persona). This latest CD features old 'classics' as well as some of her own compositions; one of the classics in question is ‘Taj Mahal’ by Jorge Ben, which I’ve also posted at BMoF some time ago. So here is this new version of ‘Taj Mahal’ so different from the original and yet so true to its joyful spirit. (Btw, I very much recommend the whole CD; lots of beautiful songs for kids and grownups!)

Brazilian music on Fridays: Nouvelle Cuisine

The connections between Brazilian music (Bossa Nova in particular) and jazz are well known, but most Brazilian musicians following a more jazzy approach (as opposed to Brazilian folk music with light touches of jazz) are based abroad (e.g. Eliane Elias). Jazz is not exactly ‘music for the masses’ in Brazil. One interesting exception was a jazz band of the late 1980s, early 1990s: Nouvelle Cuisine. Their first album (1988) featured a collection of jazz standards such as ‘My funny valentine’, ‘Embraceable you’, ‘Lullaby of birdland’, which is something quite unusual for a Brazilian band (I am not aware of any other such albums). In later albums, they continued to record jazz classics but veered more and more towards the classic repertoire of Brazilian folk music.

I was a big fan of their first album already back in the day, and listening to it now, it strikes me how jazzy and yet how unconventional the arrangements are (for jazz standards, that is). I hadn’t thought of Nouvelle Cuisine at all for many years, but the other day I heard ‘Lullaby of birdland’ on the radio (the Ella F version), and had to think of my first acquaintance with this song thanks to Nouvelle Cuisine. So let me post here ‘Embraceable you’ (I love this version, but my very favorite version is probably Cleo Laine’s), ‘Lullaby of birdland’, and to illustrate what Nouvelle Cuisine did with classics of Brazilian folk music, ‘Flor de Lis’ (from a later album), the first hit of my beloved Djavan (for the sake of comparison, here is the original).

Brazilian music on Fridays: Luiz Gonzaga, the king of baião

Yesterday was the centenary of birth of Luiz Gonzaga, without a doubt one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century in Brazil. Gonzaga popularized the music of the northern-eastern countryside of Brazil like no other, at a time when the rest of the country did not pay much attention to this poor, dry, forgotten region. The style almost singlehandedly brought to the rest of the country by Luiz Gonzaga is called baião, which is the original variant of the now very popular style forró, now enjoyed and danced by scores of young and not-so-young people of different social backgrounds and all over Brazil. (It is very popular among the youth of middle and upper classes in cities such as Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, which according to some has led to a regrettable transformation of the original northern-eastern origins of the music.) Luiz Gonzaga was the one who defined the still now official instrumental composition of a forró band: accordion (Gonzaga himself was an accordionist), zabumba (bass drum, played standing) and metal triangle; he also composed all the great classics of the genre. Because of the accordion, baião and forró sound a bit like European folk music (say, Irish folk music), and also Cajun music.

Brazilian music on Fridays: Niemeyer the composer

Today’s BMoF will continue to celebrate the life and work of the great Oscar Niemeyer. As it happens, he had his first foray into music at age 102, writing a beautiful text which was then put into music by the talented young samba-man Edu Krieger (who will get his own BMoF very soon!). The song is called ‘Tranquilo com a vida’, something like ‘In peace with life’, which pretty much describes Niemeyer’s own attitude towards life, and was recorded by Krieger himself.

Here are two videos of the song, one with the studio version, and a ‘domestic’ one at Niemeyer’s own house. Here is someone who clearly enjoyed life to the fullest!

Brazilian music on Fridays: Criolo

Good news for me: Criolo will be performing at the Melkweg in Amsterdam tomorrow, and it looks like I’m going! So to get myself in the mood, and to entice those in the Amsterdam area looking for cool things to do this weekend, here are some of Criolo’s songs.

Criolo has been active as a rapper since 1989, but his breakthrough only came last year, with the album Nó na orelha, where he mixes rap and hip hop with more mellow beats. The album made a huge splash, with raving reviews by critics and lots of love from the public. At the Brazilian MTV Music Award 2011, he won in the categories best album, best new artist and best new song with ‘Não existe amor em SP’, which I posted in the Best of 2011 edition of BMoF earlier this year. It really is a great song, despite the somewhat misleading title (there is no love in Sao Paulo – not true!). So here I’m posting this song again, but now in a live version at the MTV Music Award, and in a duo Criolo-Caetano Veloso. I’m also posting the other big hit from the album, ‘Subirusdoistiozin’, and the opening track, 'Bogota', with a great Latin-sounding beginning.

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Agua de beber'

(Sorry folks, minimalistic BMoF today due to conferencing.)

I usually don't get too excited about gringos singing Brazilian music, but this Al Jarreau version of 'Agua de beber' (composed by Tom Jobim and Vinicius de Moraes) is admittedly pretty cool... (Check here for a live version by Tom Jobim and band.)

Brazilian music on Fridays: Joyce Moreno

One of BMoF’s biggest supporters is Guy Longworth, who regularly retweets links to the posts to his wide followship on Twitter. Guy is a big fan of Brazilian music, and Joyce Moreno is one of his favorites; so to thank him for his continuous support, here is a post on Joyce!

Joyce’s career started in the late 1960s, but it is fair to say that it was actually with her 1980 album Feminina that she became widely known in Brazil. Since then, she continued to record albums and collaborate with a wide range of musicians; she is very popular in Japan in particular, and well known in jazzy-world music circles. While being an accomplished composer herself, classics from the Bossa Nova repertoire are one of her specialties, such as this version of 'Corcovado' (hence the popularity in Japan; the Japanese love Bossa Nova).

Brazilian music on Fridays: Joao Bosco

Here's a quick BMoF, which will not do justice to the magnitude of the musician whose songs I'll be posting today: Joao Bosco. He is highly regarded as a composer as well as a guitar player and singer, and known for the complexity and sophistication of his songs. My two favorite songs by him are 'Papel mache'' (1984) (in live version below so you can appreciate his guitar virtuosity -- studio version here) and 'Desenho de Giz' (1987); so with no further ado, here they are.

Brazilian music on Fridays: Madredeus

Continuing the tradition of occasionally ‘cheating’ a bit and featuring non-Brazilian music here at BMoF, this week I’m posting a couple of songs by the Portuguese band Madredeus. They are very well known in the world music circuit, among other things as a consequence of their prominent role in Wim Wenders’ Lisbon Story (1994). Their music is heavily inspired by traditional Portuguese music (including but not restricted to Fado), in particular the traditional melancholic themes of Portuguese music: sailing, traveling, longing, nostalgia (saudade!). The voice of Madredeus, the wonderful singer Teresa Salgueiro, left the band in 2007, and now pursues a solo career.

Brazilian music on Fridays: 'Vaca Profana'

In Brazil, during the military dictatorship of the 1960s and 1970s, there was quite a lot of censorship of the arts in general and music in particular. What got banned was mostly stuff with (real or imaginary) political, ‘revolutionary’ undertones, but overly 'sexy' stuff was also given a bit of a hard time. In the 1980s, when I was already more or less a thinking being, censorship had decreased considerably (technically, we had a non-elected military president until 1985, but it was nothing like the ferocious dictatorship of the 1970s), but many LPs were still sold with a sticker on the cover which said “Public broadcasting of song XXX forbidden”.

My parents had the 1984 album Profana by Gal Costa, and there I was leisurely enjoying the album on my own, when I see the infamous sticker: “Public broadcasting of ‘Vaca Profana’ forbidden”. Total panic sinks in, as I had been listening to the song full blast the whole day. What would happen to me, would they arrest me? This could have been my most rebellious act to date, overshadowing my presence (at age 5) at the meetings of the then-illegal Brazilian Communist Party and other political gatherings. I was quite surprised and relieved to hear from my mother when she got home that it was actually ‘no big deal’.

Brazilian music on Fridays: ‘Malemolência’

By the time this goes online, I will be enjoying the beauties of the island of Fuerteventura, in the Canary Islands. But before leaving, I want to share with my dear BMoF readers a bit of the pleasure of having a cold drink by the beach, through a song by the young singer CéU, ‘Malemolência’ (from her 2007 debut album). (This is how my friend Thania Thaddeu correctly describes what comes to mind when one listens to this song!) 'Malemolência' is a Brazilian word meaning a lazy, slow kind of swing: the elegant ways of the old malandros (now go look that one up!).

CéU is one of the most talented singers of her generation, receiving considerable recognition in Brazil as well as abroad (e.g. quite a few Grammy nominations). (She was one of the backing vocals for the 2010 version of  Umbabarauma, which I posted a few weeks ago.) So let CéU (which means 'sky', incidentally) take you to the beach today, while I enjoy the real thing in Fuerteventura... (Btw, BMoF will have a mini-break next week.)