(Wow, this is my fourth blog post in two days! What on earth is happening?)
Here at New APPS we have a few weekly columns: most underrated philosophers on Mondays, philosophy of economics on Tuesdays, and soon to start an interview column on Wednesdays. Eric was asking me if I would be prepared to contribute a weekly column, but I didn't see myself being able to write on a given topic every week. But, realizing that the 'A' of APPS (Arts) has been a bit neglected as of lately, I figured it would be fun to post a weekly selection of Brazilian songs I like. Brazilian music is truly fantastic (and I'm not saying it because I'm Brazilian!), but it's so diverse and prolific that it's hard to find your way around it without some guidance. I'm no 'expert' or anything, but I guess I can at least show some good stuff to the gringos here (^_^) If all goes well, there will be a Brazilian song to enjoy every Thursday from now on.
For the first installment of the column, I'll go a bit 'conventional' and opt for Caetano Veloso. He has been without any doubt one of the most influential and prolific musicians of the last decades in Brazil (perhaps *the* most influential). Not all his stuff is equally good, but he does try to innovate fairly regularly (a bit like a Brazilian Neil Young, except that he can play and sing -- I love Neil Young btw). In the 90's he had a whole period of recording songs in Spanish, classics of the Latin-American folk repertoire, ranging from Mexico to Argentina. I really like this phase of Caetano's work, and here is the videoclip of him singing 'Cucurrucucu Paloma' in Almodovar's 'Hable con ella' (I'm also a huge Almodovar fan btw, and this film is amazing).
(Thanks to Jon Cogburn for teaching me how to embed videos!)
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