BEBEL GILBERTO - Momento

 

Release/Despatch Date: Monday 2 Apr

 

tracks:

 

Momento

Bring Back The Love

Close To You

Os Novos Yorkinos

Azul

Caçada

Niight & Day

Tranquilo

Un Segundo

Cade Voce?

Words

 

now pre-ordering at cd-wow for £7.99

Bebel Gilberto: The girl from bossa nova

 

The singer Bebel Gilberto was born into Brazilian musical royalty. She tells James Mcnair how she tried to escape, but couldn't

Published: 06 April 2007 the independent

 

"Imagine all that has gone on in this hotel room," says the diminutive Brazilian Bebel Gilberto. "Fights, sex, all kinds of craziness." Though no stranger to the itinerant lifestyle, the singer clearly has ways of making such psychically "soiled" spaces seem more homely. "Frankincense," she smiles, lighting a stick with the same match that has just fired her full-strength Marlboro. "I put it in the bathroom and the bedroom and it gets rid of other people's energies."

 

Hair-tongs and a large bag of Minstrel chocolates also advertise Gilberto's occupancy. She is nursing a "super-bad" cold she caught at the Rio carnival, and the warm, grey knitwear she's cocooned in cements the image of a beach-lover many miles from Copacabana. We've met in West London to discuss Gilberto's new record, Momento, an album that was recorded in Rio, New York and London. Marrying sensuous bossa nova with subtle electronica flourishes, it is a sexy balm for the senses, infused with that gorgeous, happy-sad, feeling that the Brazilians call saudade.

 

Being the keeper of the bossa nova flame, lest we forget, is Gilberto's birthright. Her father, Joao, is largely credited with pioneering the genre's distinctive rhythms and chord inversions, with his songwriting partner, Antonio Carlos Jobim, while her mother, Miucha, is a famous Brazilian singer. Her stepmother, moreover, is none other than Astrud "The Girl From Ipanema" Gilberto.

 

One of Bebel Gilberto's contributions to the family business has been to contemporise and further popularise the Latin sound, her million-selling 2000 album Tanto Tempo (it was promoted in the UK as her debut, although actually her third) a near-perfect blend of the cutting-edge and the traditional. As Gilberto is quick to acknowledge, the input of the electronics whiz Suba, aka the Yugoslav-born pianist-turned producer Mitar Subotic, was crucial to that album's success. He died in a fire at his Sao Paulo apartment before Tanto Tempo was released. "I owe him so much," Gilberto says softly, playing with a gold pendant that depicts a tiny bird with a ruby in its beak. "My music has two categories: before Suba and after Suba."

 

On Momento she worked with a number of producers and collaborators, including the acclaimed British knob-twiddler Guy Sigsworth. The playful, jazz-flute-imbued "Caçada", though, was nailed with Mauro Refosco and Jorge Continentino at a tiny Rio studio whose stunning ocean view previously inspired John Lennon.

 

"Caçada" translates as "The Hunt", and was written by Gilberto's uncle, the musician and novelist Chico Buarque. "It's about desiring someone; craving their body like an animal," she says. "When the moon gets full you can almost smell them in the air, and it's like..." she breathes in slowly and deeply, "mmm! People tell me my music is very sensual. I like to take advantage of that and seduce people."

 

Born in New York City in 1966, but raised in Rio de Janeiro, Gilberto says that music wasn't a conscious career choice, but rather an integral part of her life from the get-go: "I don't understand it when people talk about studying music at college. I come from a completely different world. When my parents were recording or touring, I was there, too. I'd get up in the morning and my father was playing the guitar while my mom cooked breakfast."

 

By the age of nine, she'd sung at Carnegie Hall, with her mother and the saxophone legend Stan Getz, and as a teenager she acted and sang in Circo Voador, an experimental theatre company based on Ipanema Beach. "Someone from the BBC asked me if I'd heard of the Flying Circus," she says, translating the theatre company's name. "I said, 'Heard of it? Honey, you're talking to one of the founders!'"

 

For all her early successes in Brazil, Gilberto has conceded that, when she relocated to New York in 1991, it was partly to escape her lineage. Initially, she worked as a nanny and a waitress, playing small, club, gigs in the evenings. When she met and befriended the experimental US guitarist Arto Lindsay, he took her to concerts by Laurie Anderson, kd lang and Tom Waits's guitarist of choice, Marc Ribot.

 

It was a heady, celebratory time, Gilberto enjoying the Big Apple's nightlife to the full. Even now, aged 40, she scarcely seems to have mellowed, the partying lifestyle clearly something she still enjoys. "If you don't let the stress get to you, the age doesn't catch you too much," she says. "I pretend that I'm still 15 and hopefully I can keep it that way a little bit longer."

 

Another of Gilberto's survival tactics is to live in the moment. The "seize the day" philosophy is one that Momento espouses from its title-track down, but what, I want to ask her, of having kids or finding that special someone with whom to share one's life? Alas, Gilberto's countenance darkens even as I formulate the question and, suddenly miffed, she attempts to hurry things along. "Listen," she says, matter-of-factly. "There are many other things we can talk about apart from this."

 

The atmosphere gone, there's further awkwardness when, listening to Gilberto tell of working with Guy Sigsworth in west London on the day of the July 2005 bombings, I canvas her views on the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian electrician whom British police mistook for a terrorist. "It was shocking, but I don't want to go in to it," she says, giving a conspiratorial wink that is also part caveat. "My album is called Momento - let's talk about the moment."

 

Gilberto's biggest musical influences are, currently, Prince, Sade, Air, and Cole Porter, whose "Night and Day" gets a delicate bossa-nova caress on Momento. She says that she'd love to collaborate with Björk, and that the last book that made an impression on her was a biography of Greta Garbo. The enigmatic actress's decision to step out of the limelight at the peak of her fame was something that Gilberto found fascinating. Can she imagine following suit? "I don't want the responsibility of being a super-big artist who has to have hits every year. I like to play music, not just sell it."

 

Does she have any unfulfilled ambitions? "Yes, I would like to be rich. I would like to have a house in London, a house in New York, and a house in Brazil at least. I would fly first class and eat well. And take care of all the poor people that need care and love and attention.

 

"I'm doing some work with the ABC (Action for Brazil's Children) Trust, a charity that was founded by [the Led Zeppelin guitarist] Jimmy Page and his [brazilian] wife, Jimena. I'm a patron and they have this fabulous idea where people come to Rio to learn Brazilian music, and the money for the trip goes to children's schools and helps pay for the medication they need."

 

'Momento' is out on V2 on 2 April; Gilberto plays the Roundhouse, London NW1 (020-7424 9991) on 27 April