 Feature
There’s just something about singer Lilian Vieira’s irrepressible energy, and about the openhearted generosity of her melodies, that makes you feel better about being a human. It also makes you nod your head and move your hips.
Drummer/composer Stefan Kruger (a.k.a. Stuv) and keyboardist/composer Stefan Schmid are just as inspiring and uplifting in their accompaniment. They don’t limit themselves to simply providing lovely embroidery around Vieira’s glistening voice (though they certainly do that, and do it admirably); they go beyond that simple function to create a complex and funky electroacoustic fabric all their own, one that includes threads from the rhythmic and melodic traditions of South America, Europe, the United States and many other regions and cultures.
Lilian Vieira didn’t come to a full realization of the richness and beauty of her native country’s musical heritage until she relocated to the Netherlands in the late 1980s to study singing at the Rotterdam Conservatory. There she encountered fellow Brazilian musicians with whom she performed on a regular basis, and who helped deepen her appreciation of Brazilian music even as her influences expanded to include the sounds of Europe and America. “I didn’t want to remain stuck in one musical tradition,” she says. “Zuco 103 is almost a European product – of course my background provides inspiration, but that is mostly on a rhythmic level.”
Drummer Stefan Kruger is similarly expansive in his view of what constitutes the Zuco 103 sound – he characterizes that sound as “a mix of everything that exists… It doesn’t just stop with jazz, funk or bossa nova.”
“We’re continually discovering new sounds and new grooves.”
For keyboardist and producer Stefan Schmid, Zuco 103 offers a chance to get away from the formal complexity and technical virtuosity of the jazz world, which is where his background lies. “When producing Zuco 103,” he says, “I want to get as far away as possible from what I’ve ever done before.”
On Whaa!, the group’s third album, Schmid and his colleagues have succeeded in departing from their previous work. But at the same time, fans will have no problem recognizing the elements that have drawn them into Zuco 103’s unique world in the past. The reggae influence comes across most clearly in the inclusion of two songs featuring vocal contributions by the legendary – not to say infamous – producer, singer and songwriter Lee “Scratch” Perry. A man known as much for his bizarre sartorial choices (his outfits have included, at various times, children’s toys, pieces of fruit, homemade crowns and Queen t-shirts) as for his sometimes self-destructive behavior (he has all but admitted to burning down his own recording studio), Perry is at the same time one of the most gifted musicians to have emerged from Jamaica during the 1960s and 1970s. His appearance on Whaa! came about after the members of Zuco 103 expressed interest in using a sample from an old Perry song. Someone at Crammed Discs, the group’s Belgian label, suggested inviting Perry himself to participate, and after learning that he was going to be visiting Amsterdam on tour, their manager contacted him and arranged for a studio visit. He agreed, came into the studio, took charge and delivered two excellent vocals on the spot. The resulting songs, “Love Is Queen Omega” (a straight-up electro bossa nova song with brilliant vocal contribution by Perry, around whom Vieira dances with Portuguese lyrics and a lovely melody of her own, before slipping into a harmony line to accompany Perry on the chorus) and “It’s a Woman’s World,” are two of the highlight tracks on this album. Neither one is built on a reggae rhythmic structure, but Perry’s distinctive, Jamaican accented singing style and whimsical pronouncements invoke the glory days of roots reggae and add one more level of stylistic complexity to what is already an album of kaleidoscopic beauty.
Other tracks showcase different facets of Zuco 103’s celebrated mélange of pan-ethnic influences. For example, the utterly charming “Duele Le Le” is built on a swaying, 6/8 groove and features a vocal contribution from Dani Macaco (lead singer for the popular Spanish worldbeat band Macaco) as well as lots of richly arranged horns. “Mayfly,” on the other hand, is one of the album’s most unambiguously Brazilian songs, on which a chugging rhythm pushes Vieira’s soft but luminous voice through a thicket of slightly ominous sounding strings until it reaches a bright, sunny clearing where it stops to celebrate with a choir of angels. On “Nhá,” another of the album’s more straight-ahead examples of world-class Brazilian pop, Vieira’s honeyglazed vocals are buttressed by a gentle but insistently propulsive groove with funk guitar and a fun Portuguese speed-rap interlude.
Given the artistic and critical success of their previous two albums, it would have been easy and understandable for Zuco 103 to simply relax and cruise for awhile, churning out minor variations on the same-old same-old. To their credit, they decided instead to break the mold and put it back together in a slightly but significantly different form – and as a result, they’ve outdone themselves. Again. |
