Bebel Gilberto and Suba

Posted on: Friday, December 04, 2009 Category: Music Journalism

My interview with the Brazilian star Bebel Gilberto was focused on her late producer, Suba. It was done for Word magazine, April 2003.

Our story starts in a pot of boiling water, deep in the Amazon jungle, some time in the mid 16th century. Peering inside this receptacle we discover its unhappy occupant, who is none other than the Bishop of Brazil! That is correct: Dom Pêro Fernandes Sardinha himself.

If there is one thing worse than a dinner party with people you don't especially care for, then it is surely finding yourself the dish du jour. Had the Bishop only known, however, he might have been consoled by the contribution he was making to the history of Latin American music. You could almost draw a line between his demise and the writing, over 300 years later, of The Girl From Ipanema. For in boiling, carving and consuming Dom Fernandes, his cannibal hosts - a tribe of Amazonian Indians with issues around the Portuguese conquest of their land - were committing what later Brazilians would celebrate as "anthropophagism".

Loosely defined as the act of eating another culture, this became the classic metaphor for describing a process in Brazilian art - of swallowing whatever the Western world brought your way and using it to make something distinctively local. In other words: devouring the enemy to assimilate his strengths. Nowhere has Brazilian anthropophagism been more marvellously successful than in music. Think of the Bossa Nova, that smoothly persuasive fusion of Brazilian samba and cool American jazz. Think, indeed, of The Girl From Ipanema, an almost peerless pop hit from 1964 which matched the talents of guitarist João Gilberto, singer Astrud Gilberto and saxophonist Stan Getz. The famous Brazilian singer Caetano Veloso (himself a leader in the Beatle-inspired "Tropicália" movement) actually said that "Brazil was born the day the Indians ate Bishop Sardinha."

Now let's move a few years forward, to 1999, and the appearance of an album called São Paulo Confessions. It is one of the great albums of recent times. It was by a Yugoslavian musician named Suba, and released by an off-shoot of the Belgian label Crammed Discs. If you cared to look at its contents, you'd spot a track entitled Antropòfagus. As in anthropophagism. Now you know what he was on about.

The point about Suba's São Paulo Confessions is that it's a brilliant example of cross-cultural experimentation in music. The canny Belgians knew their man: he had a fantastic aptitude for tuning in to other traditions. Exposing a host of Brazilian vocalists and players to his sophisticated electronic technique, Suba made a uniquely modern record. São Paulo Confessions has the crispest Western edge but also the dark, sensuous pulse of his adopted country. Earlier dance producers specialised in taking what was human and making it sound technological. With Suba, you sense the transformation is taking place the other way around. The machine is finally acquiring a soul.

The next beneficiary of Suba's studio science was a Rio de Janeiro-raised singer, Bebel Gilberto. She would, in Brazil, pass for musical aristocracy because she is the daughter of Bossa Nova's founding father João Gilberto and the equally eminent singer Miúcha. (Just to be clear, Astrud Gilberto, who sang on The Girl From Ipanema, was an earlier wife of João's.) Together, Bebel and Suba created yet another extraordinary record.

First released in 2000, Bebel Gilberto's album Tanto Tempo is one of the stealth success stories of the new century. Like São Paulo Confessions it was issued on the Ziriguiboom imprint of Crammed Discs. Last year it was picked up by the much bigger label EastWest, who have watched its sales rise ever closer to one million. Tanto Tempo has made Bebel Gilberto an international star, and it will doubtless keep on selling. You should certainly hear it, if you haven't already - her vocals are dreamily delicious, hovering seductively above the electro-tropical arrangements. It's one of those rare instances when music seems to speak to anyone, of every age and preference.

The tragedy was, of course, that Suba would not live to hear it.

**************

"Suba? Aaahhh!" Bebel Gilberto remembers her late friend with a sad smile. "He was very intelligent and very funny. Completely Brazilian, he could speak Portuguese so well. A genius. And crazy, crazy, crazy - that's why he died the way he did. You know? He was probably smoking a cigarette and that's what happened... But anyway... He was pure music."

From the city of Novi Sad in Serbia, Mitar Subotic was the son of a TV journalist. He was formally trained in classical music, but extended his studies to everything from ethnic folk song to electronic composition. In Belgrade and Paris he pursued an equally adventurous career, making funk, ambient and dance music as well as scoring films and fashion shows. When he received a grant to research Brazilian music, he moved to São Paulo and became infatuated. In the sleevenote to his album he wrote:-

"São Paulo, Brazil. The world's fourth megalopolis with over 18 million souls, and more arriving every day. A stressful maze of massive skyscrapers, kilometric avenues and relentless chaos. Think Blade Runner in the Tropics. Life in São Paulo is fast, crazy and dangerous, as reality changes constantly. The city is full of people from all over Brazil and foreigners, all trying to make sense out of it. With time and patience to dig deep enough, you can make discovery after discovery, you find very strange people and very special places... Here, they call me Gringo Paulista. I've been in this city for ten years, and it already feels like I've led several, parallel Paulista lives."

In late 1999, the 38-year-old Suba had almost completed work on Bebel's album and was due to visit Europe in support of his own record. In the early hours of November 2, smoke was discovered coming from his São Paulo studio/apartment. After contacting Suba on the intercom, the caretaker broke down his door and discovered him alive, but suffering from the smoke and flames. All might have been well, but Suba returned to his burning studio - reportedly to rescue back-up discs of Bebel Gilberto tracks. Stricken by the fumes, he died later that day in hospital.

Suba, therefore, did not survive to see the release of Tanto Tempo. It might well have made him one of the sought-after producers in the world.

***************

Whatever the darkness in its history, Tanto Tempo will be for many a perfect accompaniment to the Summer of 2003. It's already brought Bebel Gilberto the sort of attention she has not known since she was the little girl of Brazil's first family of music. (She made her stage debut at Carnegie Hall, at the age of nine, appearing with her mother and Stan Getz.) Today she sits in a London photographer's studio, where there are stylists and stylists' assistants at every turn. Tomorrow there will be another session, this time for Vogue. Rarely has word of mouth worked such commercial magic.

"I keep meeting people who don't know who I am," she says. Her accent is distinctly Latin, though she has lived in New York for many years now. "And when they discover they go, Oh! I've been listening to your album. Or my mother plays it, or my boyfriend plays it. So it is interesting, I can make old people happy, young people happy, which is really cool. It's a totally personal album."

Gilberto's provenance made her career a forgone conclusion: "I couldn't be a lawyer, that's for sure. I left school pretty early. I always sang. I worked a lot as a child, doing jingles, helping my mother. So I think it was meant to be. I was born in New York then I moved to Mexico because my father was making an album there. We watched the World Cup in the '70s. Then we went back to Brazil and I was raised there. When I was 25 I put some money aside and decided to move back to New York and I never came back to Brazil, except to visit.

Her decision to leave Brazil suggests that being the daughter of João Gilberto was a mixed blessing. "I was a lot under my father's shadow, and it was very difficult for me. When I moved to New York I studied music, I studied English, I worked as a babysitter, as a model for a painter, and I'm glad I did all that. When people saw me I was not the daughter of a talent guy that really helped me out; I was the daughter of a talent guy that really ignored my talent because he was so into his own talent. Which I don't blame him. My mother was trying to fight against his talent too. I was not raised to be a prodigy girl. I was not Shirley Temple.

"I had to prove on my own. My father and mother did not even listen to Tanto Tempo until it was done. I think they like it. There are things that they don't understand very well, but they definitely respect me. There is a different attitude now."

During her years of struggle she spent a while in London, living with her French boyfriend. She even made her TV debut on Jools Holland's show. Back in New York she performed with David Byrne. But it was through the eclectic Brussels label, Crammed Discs, that she formed a musical partnership with Suba. Initially, Bebel remembers, it was not a matter of chemistry so much as practicality. "He was one of the few producers that wanted to work with me for free, to invest time and money. I didn't doubt him. I'm like the daughter of the traditional Bossa Nova guy - pure, pure music. Then I met Suba, who's the king of the samples, and computers and playing tapes backwards. I was fascinated but I thought, How could I do that? Sometimes I would think this was not going to work. But in the end it did work."

At the personal level they found themselves to be as different as their respective Brazilian homes: "I am very Carioca," Gilberto explains, "which is how you call when you are from Rio. And from São Paulo is Paulista. And they are very different; it's like I am from LA and Suba is from New York. Rio, where I am from, is totally more laid back. There is less money and the people are looser. In São Paulo are lots of yuppies running around after the money. Not that Suba was like that. Suba just got his own studio there, and I think that's why he settled. But Suba was more Brazilian than any Brazilian in the end."

I ask her for her favourite memory of him.

"Waking me up. We used to stay at the studio until six in the morning, then I would stay at my uncle's house which is in the same street that he had his apartment. I had to lock myself in my uncle's house, switch my cell-phone off, then sleep-sleep. Then, around two in the afternoon I would switch the phone on, because I knew he was going to wake me up. It would ring, I would answer, and he was, 'Good morning Princess! Let's have breakfast!' So at three we would walk to the boulangerie and have coffee, pretending it was only eight o'clock."

The final tracks of Tanto Tempo were completed in the weeks after Suba's death. They include the song that Bebel wrote in his memory, Lonely.

Bebel Gilberto is currently finishing her next album, and is quick to admit the difficulty. "I am without Suba. It's been a terrible frightening. It's the worst to make an album after an album with a producer that died. It's like double-killing. But I guess I'm taking over my instincts as a musician. This album is more acoustic, less electronic, lots of composition by me. It's more Bebel now. Every day I ask myself if someone's gonna like it. But hopefully they will.

"On Tanto Tempo is Suba's touch. But there is a lot of me too, because he gave me freedom. When you move away from a country, and I lived away from Brazil for 12 years, you have to change because you hear different influences. If I was still in Brazil I would not have made this album. I am definitely influenced by electronics, samples, classical, jazz, contemporary, rap, house, and this is the result."

The next album should be ready by late 2003. Whereas Tanto Tempo was allowed to emerge and grow slowly, its successor will face the weight of expectations. She must also deal with a degree of stardom. "I know," Bebel says. "I would rather be in the situation I was in with the first album. It's more healthy. I don't know how people manage. I don't know how Madonna manages to be Madonna. If I knew the recipe I would give a course! You gotta be really strong to face all that. Or really pretentious. And I'm not. I'm totally into the music. I wanna do right instead of being commercial, so it's kind of a game."

I launch upon a boring, convoluted question about the place of "anthropophagism" in her music. Naturally she looks quite baffled. Perhaps it lost something in the translation. But I would not be surprised to learn that Bebel Gilberto has never eaten a bishop in her whole life.

- Paul DuNoyer

BEBEL GILBERTO

BEBEL GILBERTO has appeared on albums by some of the most important artists of our time. Caetano Veloso (Circulado), David Byrne (David Byrne), João Gilberto (dueting on "Chêga de Saudade" on João Gilberto Prado Pereira de Oliveira) and Chico Buarque (Francisco). On her first solo effort, a self-titled 1986 EP, she collaborated with one of the greatest Brazilian composers and performers of the day, Cazuza. Since then she sang "The Girl from Ipanema" on Kenny G's platinum selling Classics in the Key of G and made several contributions to the delicious bossa nova-infused score for Next Stop Wonderland. Her and Cazuza's hit "Preciso Dizer Que Te Arno" closed the great Red Hot-& Rio compilation. She has also worked with such cutting-edge talents as Towa Tei (of Deee Lite fame) Smoke City, Amon Tobin and the Thievery Corporation.

Bebel Gilberto is, simply put, royalty. Her father, João Gilberto, is the most revered musician in Brazil, period. With his gentle whisper and his revolutionary ability to distill the complex rhythms of the samba in a guitar strum, Joao Gilberto created bossa nova. Sure there were others, and of course, bossa nova needed its great composer, Antonio Carlos Jobim. But Jobim himself was the first to point out, "Without João, there would have been no bossa nova." If her father is a musical king, Bebel's mother is a musical queen. Miucha is one of Brazil's finest singers, and one of only three vocalists to share an entire album with Antonio Carlos Jobim (Elis Regina and Frank Sinatra are the two others.)

Bebel says, "My mother deserves all the credit, because she was very important to me, in terms of learning how to sing. My mother was really my first singing teacher. She taught me how to improvise and do vocal harmonizing, since I was a little girl." When Bebel was nine years old, she appeared at Carnegie Hall with her mother and Stan Getz, as part of the Newport Jazz Festival. Around the same time she was appearing on children's television shows in Brazil.

Further enhancing the family tree, Miucha's brother, Bebel's uncle, is the composer-singer Chico Buarque, another revered figure in Brazilian music. All of this may help explain the long delay in the recording of Bebel's first full-length album. As she puts it, "Sometimes it's hard to be an artist in a family of artists." She says, "It's difficult, especially in Brazil. That's one of the reasons that I left Brazil almost 10 years ago. There's a lot of pressure. People look at you expecting a lot from you. It's almost impossible to do something."

By the time Bebel left Brazil, she had already done plenty of acting, soundtrack work, and guest vocal appearances. Her 1986 debut EP, Bebel Gilberto, led to one of the biggest Brazilian pop hits of the 1980s, "Preciso Dizer Que Te Amo," a Top 10 hit for Marina (and winner of the 1989 Premio Sharp Award for Single of the Year). Ten years later, another song from that EP, "Mais Feliz," was covered by pop star Adriana Calcanhoto and became a huge hit. Both songs were co-written by the great Cazuza, who, tragically died of AIDS in July of 1990 at the age of 32, before his growing fame could reach outside of Brazil. Bebel calls Cazuza "the most powerful poet of the 80's generation in Brazil."

So, in 1991, Bebel Gilberto moved from Rio, where she grew up, to the city where she was born, New York. There, Bebel began working with such artists as David Byrne, Arto Lindsay, Nana Vasconcelos and Romero Lubambo. She headlined in clubs and at Lincoln Center and appeared in the controversial video for Caetano Veloso's single "Fora Da Ordem." When Arto Lindsay and producer Béco Dranoff sought out fresh voices for the Next Stop Wonderland soundtrack, they teamed Bebel with Vinicius Cantuaria for updated takes on bossa nova classics.

Bebel began working with producers who were bringing the sounds of Brazilian music to contemporary dance floors. Her work with dj-producer Towa Tei on his albums Future Listening and Sound Museum led to a worldwide dance hit, "Technova," which she co-wrote. She worked with Washington D.C.'s Thievery Corporation on their single "Só Com Você" and with Dutch duo Arling and Cameron on "Sem Contenção," which first appeared on Brasil 2mil, a compilation of new Brazilian music which came out on Crammed Discs' Ziriguiboom imprint.

When her father, Joao Gilberto, made his first New York appearance in a decade, at a sold-out Carnegie Hall concert in 1998, Bebel joined him for a touching duet. By then, Bebel had moved from New York to London. She says, "It's incredible how people love Brazilian music in Europe.. I think people admire it more than they do in the U.S. In Europe I'm finding now a big opening in France, the U.K., and Germany. it's incredible. It's really exciting."

As the 20th century was winding down, Bebel started working on the entracing Tanto Tempo. Her old friend Béco Dranoff introduced her to Marc Hollander and his Crammed Discs label, a working relationship was struck, and very soon Bebel was recording in Brazil, alongside producer Suba (the brilliant Yugoslavian expatriate from Sao Paulo, whose own debut album was also about to come out on Ziriguiboom/Crammed). So, twenty-five years after she made her recording debut (she was 7 at the time) on an album by her mother, Bebel Gilberto has finally made her first full-length album. Tanto Tempo takes the classic sound of bossa nova, Bebel Gilberto's birthright, and brings it into the cool light of the 21st century.

About it, Bebel Gilberto says, "The album's name in Portuguese, in a way means, 'So Long. Tanto is ‘so much' and tempo is 'time.' It's funny - sometimes people make jokes and say, "It's taken you so long."

Tanto Tempo features a mix of old and new songs. From the bossa nova era of the 60's comes Baden Powell and Vinicius de Moraes', "Samba da Bençao" and Marcos Valle's delicious "So Nice (Summer Samba)," which was a Top 40 hit in 1966 for organist Walter Wanderley. There's Chico Buarque's lovely "Samba e Amor," and João Donato and Gilberto Gil's "Bananeira" featuring the legendary Joao Donato on keyboards. There are also new and old Bebel compositions, including her and Cazuza's Is "Mais Feliz" from her first EP, and fresh collaborations like "August Day Song," "Sem Contenção," "Lonely," "Close Your Eyes," "Alguem," and the title track. Among the album's many collaborators are Amon Tobin, Carlinhos Brown, João Parahyba, Smoke City, Thievery Corporation, Celso Fonseca, Mario Caldato, Jr., and producer Suba, who died tragically in a fire before the album was finished. Tanto Tempo is lean and clear - uncluttered, unfussy, unironic, unfettered with bells and whistles. It updates but doesn't obscure the bittersweet beauty of bossa nova. It presents timeless bossa in a new way, by a singer and songwriter who was to the music born. So often artists are shoved into the spotlight long before they are ready, especially when there's a famous name to be exploited. In this case however, Bebel Gilberto, who sings with equal distinction in Portuguese and English, and who may have taken "so much time" before she was ready to make Tanto Tempo, has allowed for a mature and masterful effort that adds another proud chapter to a dynamic musical legacy.

Suba

Suba was a pseudenym of Mitar Subotić (b. 23 Jun 1961, Novi Sad, Serbia - aka Rex Ilusivii and Mitar Subotic), who graduated from the Academy of Music Arts, in the department for composition and orchestration, in his home town. After graduation he attended a course in electronic music from the multi-instrumentalist Pol Pinone in Belgrade. Even at the beginning of his career, Suba showed an anti-career: every Sunday he produced for the Radio Novi Sad show, New perspectives - the other side of pop scene in Yugoslavia, while keeping his identity secret--and he maintained this for an entire year! Finally, he revealed himself as Rex Ilusivii (King of the Illusions). What was the result of this strategy? Only that we remember a man who changed the identity of music and reframed the music maps of the world, and who eventually became graffiti art, Rex Ilusivii on a wall in Novi Sad - The rest is forgotten. During the '80s Subotić produced demo recordings of artists well known in the Balkans, including Milan Mladenovic, Massimo Savic, Marina Perazic, and Igor Popovic. Suba also recorded an eclectic version of James Brown's Sex Machine with Milan Mladenovic, the jazzy Plava jutra with Marina Perazic, and Arabia with Igor Popovic, althouh he did not release any of those hits. Later, when Vita Simurdic from Radio Novi Sad persuaded Suba to release the LP Disillusioned, only 500 copies were released--there was no more vinyl available. Even now, Disillusioned is considered to be one of the last really well thought-out concepts of pop music in Yugoslavia. Suba rearranged the ways of creating pop music. For example, his work, Thanx, Mr.Rorschach was an eclectic, hush noise answer to Erik Satie's work, assembled as a journey through Rorschach's inkblot psychoanalytic tests. With this work he was given the chance to work with Satie's opus and so he moved to Paris. In 1988 UNESCO gave him an award for promotion of culture for an installation Dream bird, In the Moon cage created with Goran Vejvoda. The installation included Music for the Cities, which was based on sounds recorded on Madagascar and was also inspired by traditional Serbain lullabies. Later, part of this material was published in Brazil, in 1994. After this installation, Suba abandoned the pseudonym Rex Illusivi and left Europe for Brazil, to start over. In Sao Paolo, Suba made music for theater, fashion shows and commercials. At the same time, he set new standards for sound production. In the spring of 1994, along with Milan Mladenovic and other friends Suba made Angel's Breath, an amalgamation of Brazilian and Balkan folk motifs, and using the bitterness of Milan Mladenovic's lyrics. Tragically, this was last collaboration between Suba and Mladenovic, who died in November of 1994. Suba then recorded Sao Paulo Confessions, which was a major departure; created by the man from a totally different harmony. In November 1999 Subotić died in a fire in his studio while he was trying to save original recordings of Bebel Gilberto new album Tanto Tempo: a heroic death, a chivalrous gesture, and some would say, an authentic ironic death of music, after which remains only silence. Suba's presence on last.fm can be found: Angel's Breath Rex Ilusivii Suba & Cibelle Suba, Bid & Kátia B Suba & Marina Lima Suba & João Parahyba JP & Suba Suba feat. Arnaldo Antunes Suba feat. Taciana

1 CD, LP, Vinyl record album cover art ✨✧ Suba & Others — Tributo... CD

Six Degrees/Ziriguiboom, 2002. Used... Out Of Stock [+]

A wonderful tribute to Suba – the underground electronician who's had such a strong effect on the sound of Brazilian grooves over the past decade or so. Suba's lifetime journey – from Yugoslavia, to Paris, to Brazil – left him with a wealth of cultural influences, and at the time of his early death in 1999, he was just beginning to realize his full potential. You'll get a good idea of how much he had to offer on this album – which brings together the 2 surviving tracks from his last album with a host of other collaborations, and "tribute" tracks recorded for him by other artists. The groove is light and breezy – better than most other recent projects of this nature – and titles include "Voce Gosta mix" by Phil Asher, "Nightly Sins" by Joao Parahyba, "Tantos Desejos mix" by Modern Quartet & Cibelle, "Segredo Remake" by Boyz From Brazil, "Felicidade Mix" by Buscemi, "Sereia, Amor D'Agua' by Cibelle, "Future Primitivo 1, 2, & 3" by Suba & Joao Parahyba, "Lagoa Pinheiros" by Suba & Marina Lima, and "Samba Do Gringo Paulista" by Bigga Bush.