Mixing together the currently popular drum’n’bass style with bossa, electronica and MPB, Porto has put together a great album that even nods towards classical opera. It helps that as well as writing some lyrics herself, she also uses the work of fine poets and lyricists.

‘De Costas Pro Mundo’ (With My Back to the World) is the first track. It’s a warm, catchy song with a sophisticated sound and a wonderful sax section. ‘Eletricidade’ (Electricity) comes next, with lyrics provided by Ledusha Spinard. Godard and Antonio Carlos Jobim get a passing mention in this track. Again the sax makes an appearance. Overall, it’s not the most memorable track, however.

‘Baque Virado’ follows, the title a reference to a percussion pattern involving “Afro-Brazilian processional music from the state of Pernambuco.” The song bears some comparison with the earlier musical and singing style of Daniela Mercury, a singer who came out of Carnival. ‘Baque Virado’ asks “What country is this that we never see?” except on TV. It’s the country of “the sugar plantations on the Recife coast / Royalty dressed in cheap clothes / Yes, they’re blacks who speak Portuguese.” The music these people play is not samba, the usual global perception of Brazilian music. Nor are they representative of São Paulo, a city in the south where the white population is more concentrated. It’s a different Brazil, one seen on TV only in February, the traditional month of Carnival.

‘Amor Errado’ (Love Gone Wrong) has a bossa rhythm, and a guitar and piano opening. There’s some good lyrics from Eduardo Ruiz:

I thought I could forget a love gone wrong
Going away from home, having a haircut,
writing letters
I dreamed that time would be enough
So that, at night, I’d never feel
The Face, the silhouette of the shoulders,
The smell of the neck, again

‘Tudo de Bom’ (All the Best) comes next. It has a quirky, upbeat rhythm, but otherwise is not particularly outstanding. ‘Vilarejo Intimo’ (Intimate Village) is the sixth track and, again, Eduardo Ruiz contributes beautiful poetic lyrics to Porto’s musical composition.

Electric light ceases at 10 o’clock in my village
The desire to keep my eyes open follows it
I then imagine fragile sins in your honour
They grown like a parasitic plant into my brain
The contours of your lips in my fantasies
Statements of your unbearable beauty
In the darkness, that always comes…

Porto’s music and singing (in Portuguese) work wonderfully with this song.

‘Sambassim’ will already be familiar to some listeners in the UK. The song is about the music itself, the lyrics utilising musical terms and instruments to describe and explain its own rhythm and sound. It’s a song that is clever and upbeat. “With this accelerated beat, is it samba?… yes, it’s samba indeed.”

‘Outro Lugar Do Mundo’ (Somewhere else in the World) has lyrics by Porto and is about her native São Paulo: “The city getting polluted / but nobody sees.” Again, her singing brings to mind Daniela Mercury. ‘Tanta Besteira’ (So Much Nonsense) is one of the better songs on the album, while ‘Amor Não Cala’ (Love Does Not Quieten) has some lovely poetic lyrics by Porto, and the music has a warm but simple sophistication.

‘Só Tinha De Ser Com Você’ with music by Antonio Carlos Jobim moves towards themore classic bossa sound. It would have been nice to hear another few tracks like this, because Porto’s voice is perfect for this kind of thing.

‘Jeito Novo’ (Not the Same) is one of the high points of the album, a wonderful piece of modern bossa, and comes in both a bilingual Portuguese/English and an English-only version. It utilises guitar and percussion, with piano and sax coming in later.

‘Tempo Pra Tudo’ (A Time For Everything), on the other hand, has a much more distorted electronic opening and is very different from many of the other tracks on the album. However, in many ways it is an ideal bridge from the previous two bossa tracks to the following electronic-operatic ‘1999’ where Porto proves not only that she can sing opera, but that she can hit the high notes. Her voice here is beautiful, playing over an electronic beat. ‘Jeito Novo’ is back at the end, as a bonus track, with solely English lyrics.

Porto has composed music for the cinema, for which she has won critical acclaim, and has also been a pioneer in experimental computer music. Her first album has achieved Gold status in Brazil, and its diversity of styles shows an artist who is willing to take chances. The sleeve notes come with an English language translation of the lyrics.

Kara Kellar Bell is a film and media graduate from the West of Scotland, with a passion for European novels, French films, silent cinema, and Brazilian music (everything from Daniela Mercury and other pop stars through to bossa nova). As a writer, she likes to have room to move around creatively, so she’s not located in one genre. She writes realism and also stories of a more fantastic nature, usually grounded to some extent in the real world. She also takes delight in writing across the sexual spectrum, and as a bisexual, considers it important to remind people that things are not always black and white, either/or, in sexuality or in gender. She is currently completing her first novel. For a selection of Kara’s writing on the Showcase section of this site, click here

© 2004 Laura Hird All rights reserved.