World Music in Portugal: The Terrakota phenomenon
In the past ten years World Music has come to grow sufficiently in Portugal. Several new bands and musicians had appeared with great will to show the world the new achievements in portuguese music. Terrakota was one of them. These new bands helped to promote even more the many summer festivals all over the country. Among other issues, this fact brought a wave of indignation against our frivolous and hypocrite society which was soon assimilated by many young.
From Terrakota germinates an organic music ingrained in black Africa, which has sonorities from the Sahara, Caribbean, India, occident and it grows under the jamaican sun.
The Terrakota adventure began in 1999, when three members of the band (Júnior, Alex and Humberto) travelled to West Africa (Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Ivory Coast). They came back with many aborigine musical instruments and full of ideas to take up African music and recycle it, mixing the pure sound of certain acoustic instruments with the power of electric instruments, resulting in a mixture with Reggae music, Gnawa music (Moroccan music style), Cuban, Brazilian and Arab music. Types of music that come from cultures which retrace the journey of millions of African slaves and so make us always remind mother Africa.
When they returned they found the other four members: Francesco, Zé, Nataniel and Romi (the spectacular feminine voice of the band). In the spring of 2002 they recorded their first album called “Terrakota”. The themes of this record were first composed when the group had joined and met each other and some of them were already played live since 2000. It is an alive and very spontaneous album with many ideas in its pure state that results in multiple different sonorities. A document which really smells like Earth, it makes us shake our body, makes us travel, it awakes our imagination.
Their second album is called “Húmus Sapiens”. This album which came out in the summer of 2004 reveals itself more mature and balanced, with a proper sound, result of the fact of they know each other much better and of all the experience accumulated on stage. The lyrics more elaborated appear in ten different languages (including Portuguese in some of them) because it comes to them naturally and because each language suggests a new musicality. They explore and portray many things of the Mandinga culture, one of the Guinea races, and they use the Mandinga dialect in several songs. Their songs criticize hypocrisy in politics, environmental devastation, the “oppression” of Babylon system, but they also talk about the beauty and simplicity of African people and the joy almost childish around them. It is one of those records that you might not find it so special, but after listening it for a while you become passionate by its wealth and vibrant heat and by the vocal performance of Romi that is full of sensitivity and vitality. 2004 was completed with innumerable national and international concerts.
At the beginning of 2005 the band stops again to discover more roots and travel around the world. Their destinations were: Morocco, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Brazil. In the return, while they kept playing live intensely, they also started to plant the first seeds for their third album and to work in a new richer and more elaborated performance.
Terrakota is now a consolidated and independent project, which intends to extend its arms more everytime, to travel with music and to pass its message of interior search of a positive humanity.
When they returned they found the other four members: Francesco, Zé, Nataniel and Romi (the spectacular feminine voice of the band). In the spring of 2002 they recorded their first album called “Terrakota”. The themes of this record were first composed when the group had joined and met each other and some of them were already played live since 2000. It is an alive and very spontaneous album with many ideas in its pure state that results in multiple different sonorities. A document which really smells like Earth, it makes us shake our body, makes us travel, it awakes our imagination.
Their second album is called “Húmus Sapiens”. This album which came out in the summer of 2004 reveals itself more mature and balanced, with a proper sound, result of the fact of they know each other much better and of all the experience accumulated on stage. The lyrics more elaborated appear in ten different languages (including Portuguese in some of them) because it comes to them naturally and because each language suggests a new musicality. They explore and portray many things of the Mandinga culture, one of the Guinea races, and they use the Mandinga dialect in several songs. Their songs criticize hypocrisy in politics, environmental devastation, the “oppression” of Babylon system, but they also talk about the beauty and simplicity of African people and the joy almost childish around them. It is one of those records that you might not find it so special, but after listening it for a while you become passionate by its wealth and vibrant heat and by the vocal performance of Romi that is full of sensitivity and vitality. 2004 was completed with innumerable national and international concerts.
At the beginning of 2005 the band stops again to discover more roots and travel around the world. Their destinations were: Morocco, Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Brazil. In the return, while they kept playing live intensely, they also started to plant the first seeds for their third album and to work in a new richer and more elaborated performance.
Terrakota is now a consolidated and independent project, which intends to extend its arms more everytime, to travel with music and to pass its message of interior search of a positive humanity.
1 comment:
Hi! I had no idea what the Terrakota project was! It is always good to learn something new and I think you made a good choice on the subject!
***
Post a Comment