Biography
Com tradição: the literal translation would be “with tradition”, but if you say it aloud everything becomes a… contradiction. It’s the title of the third opus from Márcio Faraco, after Ciranda (2000) and Interior (2002), and it carries a recurrent characteristic: the man has been a Brazilian from the outside since ‘91, and he remains so. Actually he’s a Brasilo-Parisian. In a relatively short time, in fact, the man who one day proclaimed himself to be a “poetic exile” – the phrase scored heavily! – has succeeded in his entry to the major (Brazilian) league, and God knows the majors are legion in that other hemisphere.

Before a guided tour of the 12 rooms in this new house of Faraco, let’s go back in time and check out the foundations and cornerstones laid by its architect. Márcio was born under the sign of optimism, in a little citadel with a name that says much: Alegrete. So, where’s that? Well, deep in the south, right at the bottom of the Brazilian map; quite simply, on the other side of Alegrete lies Argentina! Following his father’s various professional postings, Márcio rebounded through Recife, Belo Horizonte and then Brasília.

As a kid Márcio dreamed of being a footballer, rather than a musician; when he was a teenager he wanted to be a rock guitarist in Brasília, the pampered capital that had sprung from nowhere with scenes everywhere. In the post-dictatorship Eighties, rock was exploding. The problem with Brasília was that it was just a hole somewhere out in the sticks, so he aimed for Rio. Rock lasted the time it lasted… Márcio composed a lot, but in Brazil there are millions of composers and he was beginning to vegetate, so why not try France?

He started with the south of France because the climatic shock was less violent. But it also meant doing clichéd gigs for peanuts in a flowered shirt and, the irony of it all, being asked to play “I go to Rio”; and then there were those private soirées in St. Trop’ for Eddie Barclay, which wasn’t on except when Quincy Jones was a guest… So, Paris! Márcio Faraco, the poetic exile, was writing and composing more and more, occasionally consulting a certain Chico Buarque (the source of much encouragement), and setting up a refined musical gang of gourmet accomplices both Brazilian and French.

A miracle came after a seven-year term in the capital when Universal Jazz took an interest in him. On Ciranda, at the turn of the century, he had a celebrated guest artist, Chico Buarque. He even came back from Rio again to sing with him the first time Márcio went onstage in Paris, on condition that his young friend set up a football game with his other artist-mates; Chico and Márcio were as close onstage as they were on the turf. The album was very seductive with its shimmering reflections and finely-polished lyrics. After the convivial intimism of the first came the introspective minimalism of the second, Interior: more bossa than samba, more acoustic folk than anything else. It was like a “self-questioning” phase in his trajectory, one bordering on asceticism... Faraco had defined the scope of his territory.
And so we come to Com tradição, the new album. It was recorded mainly in Rio with a fine bunch of local aces plus, for the occasion, some of his Parisian accomplices. Márcio wanted to do something different and offset the previous album, which had been done en bloc. Here he alternates delicate ballads and regenerative sambas to come up with a record that’s more extrovert and traditional.


Guided tour of the twelve rooms in the house of Faraco:

Apesar da escuridão
“The melody in this music, a kind of samba en redo or the thematic samba of the Carnival, came to me in Paris when I was going into the local tobacconist’s. In fact, I live in Paris as if I was still in Brazil, I look at the moon and I see the sun, it’s as if this moon was the mirror of Iemanjá, the African goddess of the sea.” On this samba you can hear all the basic ingredients, percussion, female chorus, seven-string guitar, and a marvelous Brazilian mandolin, the tintinnabulating bandolim played by the instrument’s master Hamilton de Holanda.

Cidade
“I wrote this ballad in ’81, influenced by Paul Simon. It’s been through different phases, I tried dressing it up Afro and now I’m back to this almost-folk side, which suits the suave ‘travel-shot in the street’ aspect quite well.” As a result, Márcio, who’d scrapped the song, now claims full responsibility for it.

De Jorginho
Jorginho has been his writing partner for a long time (see the song that opens the album), and also occasionally played in his team... onstage. Jorge Amorim is a Baïano-Parisian. “He’s as laidback in life as he’s fast on the guitar, and his playing’s unique. He’s a brilliant player of the samba de roda genre, and I owed him one as a tribute.” This samba de roda, curiously, is only played in two areas of Brazil: in the interior in Bahia, the state where Jorginho comes from, and a tiny corner in the extreme south… Alegrete, where Márcio was born!

Meu amigo
“My friend in the title was my grandfather, who’s now no longer alive. The way I sing about him, when he died he took with him the child I used to be. I paid this tribute to him because I loved his character; he was a just man, very respected and popular in his village”. Márcio devoted a jewel of a samba to the same man in his first album, ‘A casa de seu Humberto’. Here the rhythm is from the Nordeste, the xote rhythm dressed as a folksong. A detail that provided additional soul to the recording: in the studio Luis Avellar played the baby grand piano that used to belong to Tom Jobim.

Com tradição
“The samba’s existential contradiction lies in the sadness of the lyrics over a joyful, lively tempo. My story is that of the percussionist who’s crazy with joy during the Carnival procession, and he plays until his hands bleed.” This almost-ethereal samba is guided all the way through by two clarinets: the unctuous sound of Paulo Sergio Santos, and the more energetic sound of the musician who relays him, Cacau de Queiroz.

Boa viagem
“Yes, ‘bon voyage’! It’s the name of the beach in Recife. We used to go by there on the way to see my grandfather in the south, a couple of thousand miles in the kitsch and clumsy paternal automobile, a Willys Aero that was the only big car they made in Brazil. It never wore out. It used to take us a week and I loved it.” In this childhood travel-diary there’s another xote, this time jazzified, in the form of Carlos Malta’s inspired and romping soprano sax.

Dona Déborah
“Told like a haiku, one of those little everyday Japanese poems, this is about the short trip my grandmother Déborah took from the house to the church, saying her prayers and picking a little flower-bud in the street to plant in our garden.” A ballad for a stroll with an almost-baroque carpet of violins, all French immigrants led by the excellent Nicolas Krassik, who was adopted by the Cariocas when he settled in Rio three years ago.
Oriente
“I wrote this one eight years ago; I was impressed by those women in Kabul who lived at home like recluses. I’ve done a lot of work on it; we didn’t record it on the first trip to Rio either, I had to go back just to do this one.” It’s an afoxé, an Afro rhythm from Bahia over a cushioned tempo, a singular option for such a serious subject.

Chuva de vidro
“A rain of glass, bottles in fact, the ones that fell on Carlinhos Brown at a recent Rock‘n’Rio festival. It was an intolerant crowd who’d come to hear U.S. rock but forgotten the fundamentals, and I was very annoyed. More than he was, actually.” On this quasi-exasperated song you can hear two bracing percussionists, the Carioca Armandinho Marçal, and Mino Cinelu, the Caribbean master drummer from New York; plus a very Brazilian instrument, the rabeca, which is the violin from the Nordeste. They bring out the colour…

Tempestades de verão
“This samba-choro was inspired by Cartola, the legendary samba musician. There’s a veiled reference hidden here: I wanted a bassoon like they have in some of his music and since there’s not many about, I got the bassoon from the Rio Symphony Orchestra. It turned out his father played the bassoon as well. I was explaining Cartola’s style to him and he burst out laughing: his father was Cartola’s bassoon-player!” You can hear the bassoon crying, and the lyrics do too; but Hamilton de Holanda’s bandolim just flies around gathering pollen!

Os olhos de uma mulher
“A baião doesn’t necessarily have to be taken at a brisk tempo. For this one you have the triangle and light percussion, but not the big zabumba that’s usual in the genre; and there’s Malta’s bass flute and the Nordeste bandolim played by Hamilton which give it the kind of innocence you can see in a woman’s eyes… sometimes.” In other words, this is how Márcio Faraco takes liberties with a roots rhythm, one marked by the hits of Luiz Gonzaga.

Mundo oval
A world that doesn’t spin smoothly is… oval. And that’s not just a statement of the geometrical obvious. The events of the past few years inspired Márcio to write this samba that turns out to be impish and slightly bilingual; Uncle Sam rules the world with great maneuvers and tiny manipulations, but also with his own idioms that have invaded even the samba schools. Let the last word be with Márcio who, without falling into an attachment for the past, claims its values for his own: “All that broke my heart, because I love my Portuguese language.” Tradition and contradiction, right?



Discography