Though hardly a household name, Procopio, 33, a former industrial designer who took up professional singing only four years ago, has already made a mark in the Bra-zilian club scene and drawn praise from the country’s musical elite. In addition to Brown, artists such as clarinetist Paulo Moura and guitarist Toninho Horta–not to mention the multiple-Grammy-winning composer and arranger Eumir Deodato–pitched in on her maiden CD, to be launched in the coming months on an independent label. “Daniela’s got drive and a spectacular voice,” says the New York-based Deodato, who has worked for megastars like Roberta Flack, George Benson and Bjork. “Judging by her, you can expect a lot more good things coming out of Brazil.”
Indeed, Procopio is just one of a chorus of new vocal artists trying to break into the business in a country where legends already crowd the stage. Every generation has its exalted few, but Brazil seems to harvest fresh talent every few years. Just this decade at least a dozen promising female vocalists have captured the national spotlight. Among the best of them, a handful of twentysomething singers–Mariana Aydar, Maria Rita, CéU, Roberta Sá–are reinterpreting Brazilian classics with velvet vocals and arrangements that move freely from samba and reggae to pop and rock. That makes it all the tougher for newcomers like Procopio–and all the better for the rest of us.
A few members of the new Brazilian wave, like Maria Rita, 29–daughter of the famous singer Elis Regina and the equally famous composer César Camargo Mariano–were born into music’s royalty. Others, like Roberta Sá, 25, came out of nowhere. Fresh from journalism school, she had five live shows and a demo CD to her name when a samba track (Dorival Cayimmi’s “A Vizinha do Lado”) that she recorded for a Brazilian soap opera became a national hit. “Everything happened in such a rush,” says Sá, who still seems dizzied by it all. For her part, the 26-year-old São Paulo singer Mariana Aydar spent one year in France and a month at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, searching for something different, only to come hurrying back home. “In Brazil there’s a spontaneity and a joy to life that allows you to be creative,” she says. “I think my Brazilianness blossomed abroad.”
Who could blame her? Every nation has its treasured music, but few match Brazil’s breadth and blend of styles, rhythms and songs. From bossa nova to baião, and forró to afoxé, five centuries of mingling by Europeans, Indians and Africans have given this country a sound all its own. Thanks to stellar instrumentalists like pianist and composer Sergio Mendes, who recently recorded with Black Eyed Peas, and bossa nova maestro Antonio Carlos Jobim, who gave U.S. jazz great Stan Getz the only two pop hits of his career (“Desafinado” and “The Girl From Ipanema”), the sounds of Brazil have echoed widely. Singers have always faced a steeper climb to international recognition, not least because of the language barrier.
But thanks to the global exchange of artists and styles, hastened by easy international air travel and the Web, the barriers seem to be falling. Ironically, that has only heightened the demands on wanna-be artists as they battle for the ears of ever-more-discerning listeners. “Once, it was enough for a singer to have a pretty voice and reliable songs to interpret,” says Luciana Souza, a Brazilian vocalist, composer and three-time Grammy nominee who sings in Portuguese and English. “Now, to have a lasting impact, singers have to invest in research and production and know music history. They have to go to the source.”
To be sure, a fledgling Brazilian performer could make a perfectly respectable career, and maybe a bundle besides, recycling unalloyed classics by the likes of Caetano Veloso and João Gilberto, not to mention the oeuvre of venerated “bambas,” or samba aces, such as Monarco da Portela and Cartola. Plenty of novice musicians do just that, donning straw hats and white linen to mimic their forebears with such zeal that music critic Paulo Roberto Pires has dubbed them “Talibambas.” Yet in the race to the cutting edge, even more musical rebels have gone to the other extreme. Breaking the rules has become a cliché in the postmodern groves of world music, where there’s hardly a standard on the air or the Internet that hasn’t been remastered with digital hiccups or the Sturm und Drang of a Fender Rhodes piano.
Brazil’s singers are tinkering with the best of them. The 26-year-old São Paulo singer and composer CéU–stage name for Maria do Céu Whitaker Pouças–segues easily on her eponymous debut CD from pop to reggae to dub in velvet, jazz-accented vocals. But Brazilian rhythms are still the foundation, especially on soulful cuts like “Samba na Sola” and the stirring “Ave Cruz.” In the same way, Aydar’s feathery vocals and soothing arrangements turned Leci Brandão’s classic samba “Zé do Caroço” into a languid, hybrid “samba bolero” that teases and flatters the original.
Sometimes the blend can go wrong; too many of the tunes touted as samba-reggae sound like neither. “How many times do we have to hear a song start with an electronic scratch?” asks Pires. Yet for all the genre hopping, fancy electronics and imported flair they deploy, the best Brazilian musicians are still rooted in samba, bossa nova, forró–and all the rest of the sounds that have always made this country sing. “Being global means nothing if you don’t know where your heart lies,” Carlinhos Brown once said. That’s a beat Brazil’s new wave of talent seems determined to follow.
