3500 x 2333 px | 29,6 x 19,8 cm | 11,7 x 7,8 inches | 300dpi
Aufnahmedatum:
18. September 2010
Weitere Informationen:
Dieses Bild kann kleinere Mängel aufweisen, da es sich um ein historisches Bild oder ein Reportagebild handel
Naná Vasconcelos, who has died aged 71, was one of a handful of percussionists to elevate the skill to a high art of orchestral scope and exquisite detail. His career began in the bars of Recife and Rio de Janeiro during the 1960s, and went on to embrace collaborations with jazz stars such as the saxophonist Jan Garbarek and the guitarist Pat Metheny, as well as studio work with artists as diverse as Debbie Harry, Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Paul Simon and Laurie Anderson. He was an amiable Pied Piper of percussion who made the work of his fellow musicians sound deeper and richer wherever he travelled. Vasconcelos could shuffle complex meters and grooves from African ritual music, American jazz and Brazil’s indigenous traditions with the spontaneity of a child at play. He could mimic the chatter of rainforest wildlife or the vocal chants of cowherds, or the Amazon’s Xingu tribes, with deep gong sounds and his versatile voice. But if he could be a one-man orchestra, he was most fundamentally a listener and a selfless sharer. Born in Olinda, north of Recife, at the age of 12 he was playing the bongos and maracas in a band led by his father, a guitarist. He also learned jazz drums as well as Latin percussion from voracious record-collecting, and by listening to Voice of America broadcasts. He moved to Rio to work with the singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento in the mid-60s, free to conceive his own rhythms and sounds to complement the vocalist’s poetic and political lyrics. Vasconcelos also developed his own techniques for the berimbau – the Afro-Brazilian single-stringed bow-like instrument that had a traditional role in Brazil’s capoeira martial art – and made it his constant companion, the notebook on which he would compose, experiment and entertain in any location. He concurred both with the Brazilian bandleader Hermeto Pascoal and with Jimi Hendrix that the potential of all musical instruments should be free, not fixed by history.
