Maré
Music: Moreno Veloso / Lyrics: Adriana Calcanhotto

My partnership with Moreno, who speaks of the sea as a poetic image, while a particle, wave, something physical, that language cannot translate, from 2005. He sent a beautiful melody, all chromatic, I made the lyrics and we sang together many times (with +2 and on the project Três). I also sang in my solo concerts, in different versions and movements, and this, the version of the album, is the one I like best. The cellos, on the day in which they were recorded, made me cry.

acoustic guitar - adriana calcanhotto / acoustic guitar and cellos - moreno veloso / drums – domenico lancellotti

Seu pensamento [Your thoughts]
Music: Dé Palmeira / Lyrics: Adriana Calcanhotto

This is an exceedingly beautiful music by Dé and by our first partnership, it was one of the first certainty of this repertoire. Written in September 2003, it was kept until the recording, but during Partimpim tour we used to sing it a lot. Dé and I used to sing it in dressing rooms after the children went away and the tons of junk and toys were carefully packed. Kassin, on one of the electric guitars, goes through the song from start to end up pulsating a single note - I love it.

acoustic guitar – adriana calcanhotto / electric guitars – kassin / cellos – moreno veloso / bass – dé palmeira / drums – domenico lancellotti


Três [Three]
Music: Marina Lima / Lyrics: Antonio Cicero

It is not exactly a request of mine for Marina, but it worked as if it were, provided that, zapping the TV, I came across her (them) in the TV program Altas Horas. I got crazy and, every syllable she sang, I got crazier, the lyrics by Antonio Cicero would be gradually seen incredibly and, when the song ended, I just knew it was mine and this would be in Maré. The song like a springboard made me rush to the studio at a time when I just believed in emptying me out of Adriana Partimpim and wander about. But it was very good, the impact of music filled me with fire, and decided to close right away the repertoire (and the vacations) and set into motion. “Três” [Three] was the piece missing to take into account the songs that had a “repertoire” for recording. It is the first song by Mariana which I’ve recorded, if I am not mistaken, and this is funny, since I’ve sung so many things of hers in my shows, from Porto Alegre. Marina was strict and demanding with me, insisting that it was a wrong chord - and I loved. “Três” is one of the most beautiful songs they made together, the two brothers.

acoustic guitar – adriana calcanhotto / cellos – moreno veloso / electric piano – kassin / mpc live – domenico lancellotti

Porto Alegre
Music and lyrics: Péricles Cavalcanti

As usual, I ordered Pericles Cavalcanti a song for my album. I did a minimal briefing, saying that the environment was marine, he called me the next day with two (!!) beautiful songs. One of them is “Porto Alegre”, he even ended up writing in O Rei da cultura1 [The King of culture] because I said - and I don’t have the slightest idea why - that this would be on the album. However, in a rehearsal with Kassin, Dé and Domenico, right before the start of the recordings, they played in a way that I’ve imagined, Kassin doing that play of electric guitar, the bass of Dé, it was incredible. I loved everything and, from that time one, this was getting forever on my lists and more lists of possibilities until the final “sieve.”

It’s awesome to see Ulisses making a good impression in the first person. Funny, simple and sophisticated, a typical song by Péricles. Besides, it was very typical of our interaction the fact that he wrote a song in which can resist the mermaids - I had never made a comment that, since I started to collect songs with the clear intention of making a record, permeating everything, and more or less explicitly, this has always been the mermaid singing. I sympathize with the archetype of the woman who is the music of the sea, sexy, maternal, irresistible, hypnotic, Kianda2. Half woman, half fish, and between the bottom and the edge, who holds the signing, in the sense of first singing, the birth of signing, before the word. No contemporary singing that I know of comes so close to this primary flow like that of Marisa Monte; I know of her identification with the mermaids. Then I suggested that she created as many mermaids as she wanted and however she wanted, and this may be mermaids and Calypso as well. In the studio it was beautiful, she came, talked a bit, she opened a candy called Halls and went to the microphone. From there she got all of us hypnotized, joking, improvising a wealth of songs and making severe, acute, warbled, mermaids, all models and types. It was difficult to choose later.

electric guitar – adriana calcanhotto / electric guitars – kassin / bass – dé palmeira / drums – domenico lancellotti / congas – moreno veloso / mermaid singing – marisa monte


Mulher sem razão [Woman without reason]
Music: Dé Palmeira and Bebel Gilberto / Lyrics: Cazuza

In 1989 Bebel Gilberto gave me their demo tape, which became one of the albums of my life. One of the songs was “Mulher sem razão,”
sister of the beautiful song “Mais Feliz” (that I’ve sung since 1986, recorded in Maritmo, and then in Público), another of impressive - and unfortunately so small - crop: Dé / Bebel Gilberto / Cazuza. I liked Cazuza’s recording in Burguesia3, but Bebel’s version on that tape had melodic subtleties that made her look unheard-of every listening. One day Lucinha Araújo called me to ask you - why don’t you record “Mulher sem razão”? And I thought - yeah, why not? I talked to Dé about my former involvement with the music and Lucinha’s suggestion, and he taught me how to play right, gave me great chords, and besides he told me that the tape that Bebel had given me as gift was his!?. To prove it, he showed his own handwriting on the cover of the tape, but I pretended I didn’t know about and the precious K-7 is still with me. Dé directed our intentions and accents in the base recording and he was only got happy when he got satisfied. Then, with a base and voice recorded, Rodrigo Amarante wrote for trombones thinking about French cinema. The joy of having registered, finally, such a beautiful and intimate song, to which I am so emotionally attached.
Bebel says that the woman without reason of the lyrics is herself. Is it?...

acoustic guitar - adriana calcanhotto / bass – dé palmeira / keyboard - rodrigo amarante / trombones, tenor and bass - bidu cordeiro / drums – domenico lancellotti / congas – moreno veloso / timbrel and tambourine - marcelo costa / arrangement of metals - rodrigo amarante with felipe pinaud


Teu nome mais secreto [Your most secret name]
Music: Adriana Calcanhotto / Lyrics: Waly Salomão

It was the last composition we did together, Waly and I. We’d been working on it at the time when Cássia Eller died and that was so sad that we didn’t manage to go on, and gave up. As the time went by we were gradually taking up again slowly, until the point where he connected all the days with two or three verses for graft. I didn’t manage to format the music because the lyrics grew as if there was no tomorrow, then I issued a decree: the lyrics of the song would be that of I had until that time and call it “Teu nome mais secreto.” Since then the increases (Waly didn’t use to do cuts) would be made as a “poem,” published post-mortem on Pescados Vivos4 [Fished Alive] with the title “Madeiros do Oriente” [Woods from the East] - and with 12 verses more than those set to music by me. The lyrics is fully Waly, full of cunning and lips, it is thick, sexy, and speaks, as Duda Machado would say, in “água primeira feminia”5 [the first female water]. After Waly died, everything was very difficult and the song went back to the decanter waiting to be, maybe one day, recorded.
When I had the first idea for the music, even before defining with Waly the final form of the lyrics, I dreamed about inviting my loved Jards Macalé to play the acoustic guitar, and he agreed. He took along with him the acoustic guitar used in Transa6 to the studio - a really amazing musical instrument, with unique sound, soft arm, a dream - and he recorded the song with him. It was an unforgettable evening, and I even tried to act carefully, but I was actually completely moved to have him there. I was also wondering how impressive Wally could be, it was fucking awesome.

acoustic guitar - adriana calcanhotto / acoustic guitar – jards macalé / cello - moreno veloso / mpc live – domenico lancellotti

Sem saída [No way out]
Music: Cid Campos / Lyrics: Augusto de Campos

I’ve read in the blurb of the book Não poemas7 by Augusto de Campos, Arnaldo Antunes says that “Sem saída” takes up again the most repeated motto by the antagonists of concrete poetry (he may have taken the poetry to a “dead end”) and I got very awestruck with that information. With the poem, there is a maze to be travelled across with the mouse, where you read the verses in any order; I was already flabbergasted, and very indeed. When I listened to, some time later, the same “Sem saída” set to music by Cid Campos in his Fala da Palavra8, then actually, I got completely. It is incredible that Cid has the gift to set poems to music, sometimes very complex, apparently they cannot be set to music or simply mad, and turns them into round songs and very beautiful with nothing to draw from their strangeness, however. I found his recording so beautiful that I decided to record it exactly the same, using the same arrangement, the line of cover. As the time went by, Arto began to argue that the recording by Cid existed, why to do it all again? I understood the point of view, but I didn’t appreciate the idea of separating me from the contracantos and bluesy atmosphere, despite being determined not to establish arrangements. After all, I recorded the acoustic guitar that Cid himself taught me how to play and, about him, Arto and I played the drums. One at a time, no drumsticks, we only played the rattles and objects in the direction of drums and cymbals. It was funny and helped me to exorcise some of my resistance related to the drums, an instrument which I found it overestimated (please understand, I am a daughter and sister of drummers, I grew up listening to the creatures drumming on the table, at wheel of the car, in almost every available surface, it is tiring, to say the least). In short, thus playing, Arto managed to set me free from Cid’s sound of the recording and suggested that Aldo Brizzi wrote an arrangement on the acoustic guitar and drums already recorded, which I found it superb. I’d already been thought about calling him other times, but these were the exact time and song.
Aldo is touching in the way of interacting with musicians and technicians. He knows that it’s necessary to open the ears around to microtones, which he will find resistance and says it is amazing how very interesting instrumentalists, known for his open-mindedness for experimentation, in terms of form, harmony and even of time, have trouble working with non-conventional concepts of tuning. It is not easy to win them for the operation of internal nuances of the same note, they get uncomfortable with the beats and stroke of harmonics and shock. I wonder that is the fact that they’ve spent years and years studying to play tuned or even temperate, but with precision. Moreover, not so many parts are either written then, finally, I believe, or rather, I hope that this is only the first of several works in collaboration with Aldo Brizzi.

acoustic guitar, drums - Adriana Calcanhotto / bass and electric guitar - Alberto Continentino / trombone - Marlon Sette / Cello - Moreno Veloso / drums - Arto Lindsay/ Arranjo - Aldo Brizzi


Para lá [To there]
Music: Adriana Calcanhotto / Lyrics: Arnaldo Antunes

It happened in a curious way. Marisa Monte phoned invited to a secret pal where we, composers, would exchange, instead of gifts, pieces of music or lyrics, depending on the expertise or the desire of each one. As I didn’t have any lyrics (because I don’t write lyrics without music) I took the melody that I had, by chance, it was in the drawer. In the draw I drew Dadi, who gave me a CD with two tunes, and he drew my name! There were too many songs, therefore, for no lyrics, but finally it was just a joke, I forgot it. I recollect that that night I saw Arnaldo and Marisa outlining a draft of lyrics, but soon I forgot about the issue. Months later, in a season of concerts in Lisbon, I received Arnaldo in the dressing room, who came to show me beautiful lyrics for a song that I didn’t even remember that there was and that worked out nicely in the repertoire Maré.
There was even the electric guitar which Arto recorded in only one take, live, punk, real time, beautiful. Then the piano of Rodrigo Amarante, wearing a jacket and flowers, was also a gift, literal, on my birthday.


acoustic guitar – adriana calcanhotto / electric guitars – kassin / piano – rodrigo amarante / solo electric guitar - arto lindsay / bass – dé palmeira / drums – domenico lancellotti


Um dia desses [One day like these]
Music: Kassin / Lyrics: Torquato Neto

Kassin showed through the telephone, I was going to the airport by car and he was at home playing the acoustic guitar. Listening very badly through the mobile, the connection was dropping, I fell in love with the song. We sang it together on the tour +Ela and, we got back home, I sang in the solo shows to enjoy the wonderful steel acoustic guitar that Yamaha gave me as a present.
When Kassin sang through the telephone, I understood - for the urgency in showing me, or perhaps because the connection was awful - he had just finished setting the poem by Torquato to music. But not, then he told that he had done it for sixteen years, on the way home from school, after reading the poem in “Os últimos dias de paupéria”9 [The last days of pauper]. On the day of the recording he dropped by the studio to give a kiss, and later he called saying that music didn’t stop running on his head, which he was transported to his sixteen years, and he was calling to say this, I was feeling in the old school Terylene pants.
I find interesting the mix of Torquato Neto with Kassin in a song resulting, despite the irony of one and the other, positive, hopeful, solar. Unlike the image that one has about the poetry of Torquato, the Midnight Rambler, and as Helio Oiticica called him. I love the echo of the “noite escura” [dark night] in the verses of that poem with the “noite escura” by Waly, in “Teu nome mais secreto” [Your most secret name].
It was nice having in the track Alberto Continentino, playing loose and providing input. He entered the album to play the arrangement by Aldo Brizzi, I got happy in having him this time playing what he himself invented for music. Moreno recorded the delicate vocals that he used to do with me in the tour +Ela.

steel acoustic guitar – adriana calcanhotto / electric guitar and bass – alberto continentino / vocals – moreno veloso


Onde andarás [Where will you be]
Music: Moreno Veloso / Lyrics: Ferreira Gullar

I’ve always loved this song, I’ve always wanted to sing it and thought it was the right repertoire to try. And I liked the solutions found by Moreno, Kassin and Domenico for the issues that I put forward about how (or why) to record this music. I would like that this was the least contaminated possible manner of irony of interpretation by Caetano - which, to me, it has always sounded a bit as an excuse for the emblematic and devouring imitations of Orlando Silva and Nelson Gonçalves10. I thought that, with the imitations, Caetano printed a certain distancing of unbridled pungency of the poem - which I intended to face. It was not the easiest task, obviously, but we got, I and all that I drove crazy with the issue, happy with the result. We were also supported by a luxurious and sweet sacred monster, Jorge Helder, on acoustic bass and by the dear Marcelo Costa on percussion.

acoustic guitar - moreno veloso / electric guitars - kassin / bass - jorge helder / files, skequere, block, bike, mpc live - domenico lancellotti / drumsticks and afoxés – marcelo costa


Sargaço mar [Seaweed sea]
Lyrics and music: Dorival Caymmi

It is a pearl form 1975 that I couldn’t help it, and I didn’t even try. I would like very much that this sounded simple, empty, the most Caymmi as possible, then I called Gil and he told me he was in the audience of the Municipal Theater of São Paulo in the night Caymmi showed the song for the first time. That is, the track really needed Gilberto Gil, and nothing else. We recorded together, live, the acoustic guitar and voice, on a sunny Saturday.

acoustic guitar – gilberto gil

Notes:

(1) O Rei da Cultura, Pericles Cavalcanti, DeleDela / Petrobras São Paulo: 2007

(2) In Angola, the worship of Kianda, god of the sea, there has been always there, secretly, even after colonization, and a test of strength of the African mythical imaginary. The ianda (plural of Kianda) are regulator entities of everything that is related to the ocean. According to Ruy Duarte de Carvalho, one gets enchanted by the people, they are veiled by them and by the water, making it manifest, according to research conducted by the anthropologist and poet, in different ways.

(3) Burguesia, Cazuza, Polygram: 1989

(4) Pescados Vivos, Waly Salomão, Rocco Publishing House, Rio de Janeiro: 2004.

(5) Transa, Caetano Veloso, Polygram: 1972

(6) in the poem “Manhã piscina” [Morning swimming-pool] in a wave of margin, Duda Machado, Editora34, São Paulo: 1997

(7) NÃO poemas, Augusto de Campos, Perspectiva Publishing house, São Paulo: 2003.
“... em “ Semsaída,”” [… in “No way out”] printed on the back cover, which takes the most repeated motto by antagonists of concrete poetry (which she had brought the poetry to a “dead end,” expression also quoted/offered in “desplacebo” [Non-placebo], making her meaning positive, affirming the power of the challenge before the impossible. “Semsaída” reminds “everything is said” (1974), which says, and just like by way of deciphering which requires to reach to the case. And also by the free disposal of sentences, which can be read in different orders ."... (Arnaldo Antunes in the blurb of the book called Não [No]).

(8) Fala da Palavra, Cid Campos, Independente Publishing House, São Paulo:2006

(9) Os últimos dias de paupéria, Torquato Neto (organized by Ana Maria Silva de Araújo Duarte and Waly Salomão). Max Limonad Publishing House, São Paulo:1982.

(10) "... the beginning of the track “Onde Andarás,” a partnership of mine with Ferreira Gullar, looks like Chet Baker. Then I mock Orlando Silva and Nelson Gonçalves” ... (Caetano Veloso about his recording of “Onde Andarás,” the album by Caetano Veloso, 1967, Philips)