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Oh, they categorize music in Brazil; it's just done differently than here. And truly, there's still a sense of "porousness" about many things, including the boundaries between popular and classical - refreshingly so, I think. It's something that seems to be difficult for us to "get," in some respects, anyway. (Luciana Souza, a Brazilian singer who now lives here, has been highly praised for her recordings of Brazilian standards but faulted heavily for doing a similar project with contemporary American songs - the verdict was that it was much too "pop-oriented.") Thanks for the story on the milliner; black women have kept the profession alive! (See Crowns: Portraits of Black Women in Church Hats.) It's interesting you say that. I recently bought the great box set "Hitsville USA: The Motown Singles Collection 1959 - 1971." In the booklet, it said this about Marvin Gaye: "In his artistic heart of hearts, Gaye longed to be a troubadour, the next Nat King Cole or Perry Como, singing standards by Rodgers and Hammerstein, Brecht and Weill. He even told confidant and biographer David Ritz at one point, 'I never wanted to shake my ass... I wanted to sit on a stool and sing soft love songs.'" He did make at least one crooner-type, standards album - IIRC, his wanting to do these kinds of albums was mentioned a lot after he died.

Mark, thanks for the great post. This is interesting to me partly because I can recall (a bit) this kind of eclecticism in pop music; also because the "considerably more porous" thing is still true in, say, Brazil. My thought is that we N. Americans are pretty intent on categorizing music and artists, while a lot of Latin Americans are far less interested in that than we are - "popular" in Brazil means something very different than it does here. (Lots of Brazilian "popular" music would be labeled as folk, traditional, "roots music" - or whatever - up here.) My guess is that a lot of Aretha's contemporaries thought very much as she does - Marvin Gaye comes to mind, for one.

That "Hendrix of the kora" biz was cooked up by publicists. He is good, but he's not the only kora player to have done plugged-in work - Toumani Diabate has played with a pickup, and so has Mory Kante. (See Banning Eyre's In Griot Time for more info.; there should also be some material about this on the Afropop Worldwide site.) * Note: Banning's book appears to be o.p. in the US, but the asking price on Amazon.com is insanely high. I'd try abebooks.com, or else write directly to Banning - he should have some copies for sale. Edited to add: Just for fun, I Googled the phrase "Hendrix of the kora" (no quotes) and found that it's applied to virtually every African kora players who's performed in the UK, the US and Canada.

I like that idea - nifty names, too! (Index especially.)

Heck, I'm ready to move; sounds like a cool place! Well, it's a small town in the mountains of NE Pennsylvania - not exactly prime jazz territory. Since I'm from PA, too, I love the way Elliot and his band are using small-town names for a lot of their pieces, but that doesn't make the places "cool" by default.

I've driven past it.

Try $29.95...

Mm, can't say I'm greatly in favour of subscription fees. It makes e-music like the old record clubs. But if you don't want anything this month, because you've already got too much recent stuff to listen to, well tough, still pay. I absolutely can't absorb more than about 200 albums a year - preferably fewer; 170 last year and that was slightly too many as I only listened to 85% of the albums I've had for longer than two years. MG MG, I think it's a lot different than those record club boondoggles, because there is so much there. Have you looked recently? (I do find myself doing a lot of single-track downloads there, BTW.) There's absolutely no comparison between typical "record club" stock and sites like Emusic. I think you have to look at it as a completely different business model. Edited to add: Forgot to mention how much I dislike iTunes (store and software). FWIW, there's also a lot of good material available on CDBaby - MP3 and/or disc. A lot of people who sell through CDBaby also have their albums available on Emusic.com, though without artwork and inserts. (Which are included if you buy directly from CDBaby.) Last thought: a lot of rare, o.p. material is available on Emusic.com. I've been able to get hold of things that I simply can't afford as used LPs/discs, which is a godsend. Their setup is also very helpful for anyone needing to hear material in a hurry (for research, review, etc.). (I've dug into the Document Records catalog there - just an amazing resource!)

Emusic.com No, the majors aren't there, but just about everyone else is. Subscription fees, not per-track fees, and actual ownership of files.

It definitely is a relatively "old" term, but they're not sure just how old. (Obviously predates "bossa nova," though!) Sorry for quoting myself, but.... I got the info. because of discussion on page 1 of this thread. (Confusion over an album title.)

in other words: "each one she passes goes aaahhhh ... " Hard to say, since the original lyrics don't have a line like that. She's described as being graceful (etc.), but ...well. As with many other songs, the English lyrics are an approximation, not a even close to a word-for-word translation.

Meanings of the word "bossa" I asked a Brazilian friend about this earlier today. the reply: It definitely is a relatively "old" term, but they're not sure just how old. (Obviously predates "bossa nova," though!)

I used to keep up a database/running inventory of my CDs and LPs - and never found one "right" way of handling boxed sets. For the most part, I simply counted them as a single item, without trying to cross-check against the rest. (Especially true of Mosaic boxes, since they don't include the original cover art and cuts from a single album might be spread out over more than 1 LP/CD .)

"Revisionist"???? Do you mean how she's being marketed now, or in the 60s? (Am feeling somewhat confused here.) Regardless of her aspirations (or lack thereof), I think she'll always be viewed through her association with João, in the US, at least. They made a hit single, after all... (But I completely agree that she was/is much more in the mode of people like Claudine Longet.) To me, it's strange that Miucha (Chico Buarque's sister, mother of Bebel) and João lived here in the US, but somehow Miucha never really was on the radar - even after "Best of Two Worlds." Her voice is a little frayed now, but she's still a good singer.

Hmm... Wanda Sá (formerly known as Wanda de Sa/Sah) isn't exactly what I'd call a "copycat." She's pretty highly regarded in Brazil, too. From her AllBrazilianMusic bio. - Astrud was not a singer. João insisted that she sing when the 1st Getz/Gilberto album was being recorded. The rest is history.

Hmm.... I haven't taken the train from D.C. to NYC since 2002. Maybe fares have come down a bit since then? And 175 round trip is (I think) price-gouging on Amtrak's part. 75.00-100.00 round trip sounds about right.

EMI Brasil. The Odeon catalog belongs to them. As for the title "A Bossa Eterna," the word "bossa" has had multiple meanings in the vernacular. The word itself was already around when bossa nova came along. (Will have to see if one of my Brazilian friends can help a bit with background on this one.)

He used two different spellings for his first name. Many of his recordings were done with the alternate spelling: Victor. I know that probably seems like a minor point at best, but it's very helpful if you're searching for his recordings. He also doubled on soprano, and is survived by his brother, pianist João Carlos Assis Brasil. Here's a link to his bio. on the AllBrazilianMusic site.

I've spent a lot of time working in bookstores, though not in recent years... but have to say that when i was doing that, the major publishing houses were putting out *way* too much. Even those of us who read the trade papers religiously had no real hope of keeping up with the flood. The idea seemed to be that "More is more," meaning that putting more stuff out there would automatically translate into more sales and thus more money for the big publishing houses. Most of the best stuff tends to come from mid-sized-small publishing firms, whether university presses or small independents. (Though there are some imprints - now owned by the big companies - that are pretty consistent with good material, like Penguin.) overall, a falling-off in the amount of books printed per year would probably be beneficial to the book trade, authors, etc. As for ebooks, well - no shortage of them (legal and otherwise) online. Your local library is probably offering some - maybe a lot - to its patrons, all free. This has been in the wind for a long time. And Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Amazon's Kindle is adding to the big push. (Kind of reminds me of how things were back in the late 80s, when the switchover from LPs to CDs happened.) I bet a lot of us will be surprised - in a good way - by newer forms of publishing and distribution. (should I mention that I have a Kindle on order? It's for my mom, though, not me.)

I think there are others who'd claim that they invented that phrase. You know that merengue comes from the Dominican Republic, right? (Like bomba and plena come from Puerto Rico.) There's also Haitian-style merengue, but I'm blanking on the correct spelling right now...

It's there... try refreshing the page. If you can't get to it, PM me, OK?

Chombo Silva! "Nuff said; must be fantastic!!! And yeah... recording contracts. Like those Ellington and Basie albums of B'way and movie theme song hits that were made back in the 60s. I think everyone got stuck recording X amount of schlock back then; it's still true with the majors. (Which is one reason why some albums by people like Milton Nascimento are so dismal.) Edited to add: Chombo Silva (vln) with Charanga Tipica Ideal live (1976), as recorded by the owner of the blog (Fidel's Eyeglasses).

I hear you about "friskier," but I think that you're hearing the son montuno thing in that video of Fajardo's group doing "Son de la Loma." It's a "harder" sound, fits well into the NYC salsa dura genre. There's some bad Fajardo out there, where he covers things like "The Poor People of Paris." And for some reason, those records seem to stay in print, or else cuts pop up on compilations. I think you're absolutely right about his playing, though. am not sure that you can really characterize charangas as "society bands" on the whole - it depends on the material they play. Aragón sticks with lots of cha-cha-chás and danzones, which is what they're famous for. If they switched over to son montuno rep., they'd probably have a very different sound! As far as Cubans, Puerto Ricans (et. al.) and their views about each other's music, yeah... the same thing happens when people from Uruguay and Argentina start talking about tango. (Where it originated, who's better at it, whether Carlos Gardel was really from Argentina or if he was Uruguyan, etc.) I try to stay far away from all that; I just like the music, not the politics associated with it! (With Cuban music, "Who invented the cha-cha-chá?" is another question that can get people really riled up - some believe it was Enrique Jorrín, some that it came from Aragón...) Edit: nice piece on contemporary charanga and Latin jazz flutists, over at Chip Boaz's blog.

Nice clips! Remember, though, that Aragón is doing what it always did - playing classy-sounding dance music. It's in their interest to retain a lot of their 50s sound, though I'm sure their charts for classic material have all been updated. I really like Orquesta Broadway, but for some reason have never really warmed to Fajardo's sound - the latter doesn't make sense, really, since I like the more "refined" style. (Just not the way his band played it.) Edit: Either I have tin ears, or the Fajardo CDs I've got are not representative. (He did do some fairly schlocky stuff at times, but your clips are not like that - thanks again!) And O. Broadway is (I think) very "New York" in its approach, though I may be mistaken there - would need to check with some of the folks who got me into salsa (etc.) in the first place to be sure. I just like it, but they've been immersed in it for decades. Edit (again!): In that 2nd Fajardo clip, they're playing "Son de la Loma" by Arsenio Rodriguez - hard to go wrong with that!!!