Friday, October 04, 2013

Where Have I Been? On Discovering Lenine (Brazilian musician)

Last night I was up until 1 am. I needed to do some work, but I just couldn't stop listening to music (on YouTube, so lame, but that's all I can do because not all Brazilian music is on Spotify).

Tonight is more of the same, though for our benefit I also baked!!! Catherine Newman's favoritest "Rhubarb Crumb Bars." And I also got to show most of the music I found last night to my husband who was working on the desk behind me. YAY!

All I could think of as I listened to Lenine's songs over and over last night was "Where have I been that I didn't find out about him earlier?"

Well, easy answer... I live abroad and not in Brazil. I've been here for 17 years and I often don't take full advantage of all that I can access online to be in better touch with my country.

All that matters now is that I finally found Lenine's music, particularly the acoustic and orchestral renditions of his songs as registered in his 2006 DVD Acústico MTV (CD available on Amazon, but it doesn't have the last song below).

It all started when I went to check a song I had assigned for my class to listen to (I'd put it in the syllabus) -- I had found this song sometime in the past year when searching for songs with the preposition "por," "Tudo por acaso" [everything by chance]:


Then I found "Paciência" [patience] and I almost died... (there's a lovely harpist who plays with him, Cristina Braga). This one is in HD!!


And then... "O silêncio das estrelas" [the silence of the stars] -- with an English horn!! Unbelievably, indescribably beautiful.

Wasn't that English horn just amazing? It was played by Victor Astorga, from Argentina.
I think I need to buy this DVD...

Edited to add (my third or fourth edit). I just wanted to say that most of the DVD is mostly upbeat, except for these songs right here. ;-)
This one, "Medida da paixão" [measure of passion] Lenine sings with the bassist from Cameroon Richard Bona:

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