Exile Blues

Another day I read

“So, here you are
too foreign for home
too foreign for here.
Never enough for both.”

by  Ijeoma Umebinyuo, Questions for Ada

Another day I discovered an artist called Bruno Catalano, in his sculptures there are holes in the place of the chest, they are travelers, immigrants, exiled, they carry their worlds in one only bag. Maybe a part of us always stay in our land, this missing part, the hole. So, in a new land we fill this hole with new friends, other landscapes, other languages, but part of this hole will be longing of a land that no longer exists.

 

 

When the saudade invades my chest I used to listen music from my country. Yesterday I went to a party where playing Brazilian songs, I danced and sang in my language, in Brazil we used to say that every Brazilian when was born already know how to dance, so I danced as I was in Brazil.

“o mar serenou quando ela pisou na areia/quem samba na beira do mar é sereia…”

 

Je te laisserai des mots

Sometimes in the middle of this insane world full of cavemen, too loud, too fast, a freak show, we can find some delicate flowers, some peaceful isle as this adorable song. A poet who spreads words of love and delicacy along the path to his beloved.

Je te laisserai des mots

En dessous de ta porte

En dessous de la lune qui chante

Tout pres de la place ou tes pieds passent

Cache dans les trous de temps d’hiver

Et quand tu es seule pendant un instant

Embrasse moi

Quand tu voudras

Embrasse moi

Quand tu voudras

Embrasse moi

 

Une chanson d’amour

 

Taâli is a song written by Mohamed El Kamel and performed for the first time by Salim Halali. Halali represents a sort of musical continuum between Arab and Jewish at a moment when the two were being torn apart in Algeria. It’s a song that celebrates love and nostalgia. His Andalusian rhythm adds to the subtle poetry of his lyrics a sublime harmony that provides a delight to the ears, heart and soul. A wonderful sample of  Maghreb music, I could not find a good translation to English, so if some of my friends who speaks Arabic would like to send me a translation I would appreciate.

After Salim Halali many other singers made versions for this beautiful song, I adore female voices, specially to Arabic language. The unbelievably talented team of Neta Elkayam and Amit Hai Cohen, Israeli artists of Moroccan origin, have created this mind blowing version below.

Donne moi la flute

Each human being is like a living flute. Delightful music is produced when the breath of divine that live inside us flows through this hollow reed. We are the musicians of our Universe. And our melodies could live forever in the memory of our beloved.

“Give me the flute and sing
For singing is a secret of existence
And the wailing of the flute remains
After the vanishing of the world

Have you taken the forest, like me
As a home, instead of palaces
So have you followed the waterfalls
And climbed the rocks

Have you bathed in fragrance
And were you dried by light
Have you drank the dawn as wine
From cups of ether?

Have you sat in the afternoon
Like me, between grab vines
And the clusters hanged
Like chandeliers of gold?

Have you taken the grass as bed
And the space as blanket
Humbled of what’s coming
Forgetting what has passed?
Give me the flute and sing

And forget the illness and the medicine
For people are lines,
Written, but by water!

(Gibran Khalil)

Candeia, Brazilian Songs (02)

Portuguese/English

Embora a musica tenha sido eternizada na voz de Cartola, o compositor dela foi Antonio Candeia Filho, popularmente conhecido como Candeia. Ele viveu uma vida curta e intensa, falecendo aos 43 anos, sendo que destes os ultimos 13 anos foram em uma cadeira de rodas. E talvez porque sua vida tenha sido tão curta muitos de seus versos são atribuidos a outros sambistas e cantores brasileiros.
Although this music has been eternalized in Cartola’s voice, this song was composed by Antonio Candeia Filho, known popularly as Candeia. He lived a short and rough life, dying suddenly at age 43, of which the last 13 years have been passed in a wheelchair. And unfortunately , because his life was so short, many of his verses are attributed to other Brazilian samba singers.

Deixe-me Ir /Let me go

Let me go, I need to wander
I’ll go around, seeking
To laugh, so as not to cry (repeat)
I want to watch the sun rise, to see the rivers’ waters flow
To hear the birds sing
I want to be born, I want to live
Let me go, I need to wander
I’ll go around, seeking
To laugh, so as not to cry
If anyone asks after me, tell them I’ll only come back after I find myself
I want to watch the sun rise, to see the rivers’ waters flow
To hear the birds sing
I want to be born, I want to live… (repeat)

Roza de las Rosas

Roza Eskenazi was a Greek diva who saved fellow Jews during the brutal German occupation of Greece. Roza was born to a poor Sephardic Jewish family in Istanbul and raised in Thessaloniki. Roza was discovered by a Greek tavern owner who heard her singing while working as a house cleaner. By the early 1930’s, Roza was a star performer who recorded 300 songs for Columbia records. She was the charismatic queen of rembetika, the Greek blues, and often compared to Billie Holiday.

Germany invaded Greece in 1941. Roza, then running a popular nightclub, avoided deportation because of a faked baptismal certificate. She risked her own safety by hiding Jews and resistance fighters in her own home, saving dozens from deportation to Auschwitz. Roza was arrested and imprisoned by the Germans, but was released before they found out she was Jewish. She spent the rest of the war in hiding. After the war, Roza’s career waned, but her music was rediscovered in the 1970’s, a few years before her death in Athens in 1980.

Brazilian Songs (01)

I am translating some Brazilian songs, this is first of many others that will come 🙂

During Brazil’s military coup d’état of 1964, Chico Buarque wrote about the events which transpired and avoided censorship by using cryptic analogies and wordplay. For example, in the song “Cálice” (“Chalice”, or Jesus’ Last Supper “Cup”), he takes advantage of the homophony between the Portuguese imperative “shut your mouth” –cale-se– and “chalice” –cálice– to protest censorship against freedom of speech.

Chalice (Chico Buarque)

 

Refrain:

Father, remove from me this chalice (3x)

of wine tinted with blood!

 

How to drink this bitter drink

Inhale the pain, swallow the drudgery.

Even if the mouth is shut, the heart still remains

Silence in the city is not heard.

For what is it worth for me to be the son of the holy mother

It would be better that I were born to another

Another reality less lethal

Without so many lies and repression.

 

Refrain

 

How hard it is to wake up silenced

If I hurt myself in the quiet of night

I desire to release an inhuman scream

Which would be a way to be heard

All of this silence makes me dizzy

Dazed, I remain attentive

In the expectation of, at any moment,

To see the monster of the lake emerge

 

Refrain

 

From so much fat, the hog no longer walks

From so much use, the knife has gone dull

How hard it is, father, to open the door

With this word stuck in my throat

This Homeric drunkenness in the world

What’s the advantage of having good will?

Even if the heart is silenced, consciousness remains

Of all the drunkards in the center of the city

 

Refrain

 

Perhaps the world isn’t that small

Nor is life a consummated fact

I desire to invent my own sin

I want to die from my own poison!

And disconnect my mind from yours

May my head lose your way of thinking

I want to sniff diesel fumes

And get intoxicated until I’m forgotten!

 

 

Samba em Prelúdio

Portuguese/English

Numa noite de 1962, Baden Powell foi a casa de Vinícius de Moraes com uma canção que ele dizia ser apaixonada e cheia de amor. Ele chegou na casa de Vinícius por volta das nove da noite, ansioso por lhe mostrar a canção, que imaginou ser cantada por uma mulher e um homem juntos. Sentaram-se à mesa os 3: Baden, Vinícius e uma garrafa de whisky.

Já eram 3 da manhã, eles já na terceira garrafa de whisky, estavam quase bebados e nada de Vinicius escrever a letra. Então, Baden lhe perguntou o que havia de errado. Vinícius num primeiro momento disse que nao era nada, depois disse que era um pouco desagradável, foi evasivo e por fim disse que preferia não escrever a musica. Baden  insiste em saber o motivo. Vinícius então “eu acho que voce plagiou esta musica, todos os jornais vão dizer Vinicius e Baden plagiaram uma musica”.

Baden surpreso  pergunta:” Plagio de quem?” Vinicius responde: “Claramente de Chopin”. Baden lhe assegura que não era Chopin, afinal ele conhecia bem a música os prelúdios, etc. Vinícius não se convence e retruca dizendo que Baden tinha bebido muito. Vinícius resolve acordar sua esposa, que era pianista e grande admiradora de Chopin. Lucinha escuta a música e diz ser uma bela cançao e que seguramte não era Chopin. Vinicius então retruca: “até voce está contra mim?”, se volta para Baden e diz: ‘Neste caso então, Chopin esqueceu de compor esta musica. Vinicius se senta em frente a maquina de escrever e em poucos tempo escreve esta belissima letra para a composição de Baden

…………………………….

One evening in 1962, Baden Powell went to Vinícius de Moraes’ house with this song , which he described as passionate and full of love , for Vinicius to write the lyrics. Baden  got to Vinicius’s at around 9 p.m., excited to show him the song, which he imagined being sung by a man and woman together. The three of them sat at the table: Baden, Vinicius and a bottle of whisky. By the time they were on their third bottle at around 3 or 4 a.m., Baden grew worried that they still had no lyrics and were “nearly drunk.”

Baden asked Vinicius what was wrong. Vinícius at first time said that it was nothing, then said the issue was “disagreeable”, Vinicius was evasive, at last he said he would rather not write the song . Baden pushed him, and he exclaimed, “I think this is plagiary! It will be all over the newspapers, ‘Baden and Vinicius plagiarize.’”

Baden was surprised and told Vinicius the song wasn’t plagiarized, but asked“plagiary of whom, of what?” Vinicius responded, “This is clearly Chopin!” Baden assured Vinicius the song wasn’t Chopin’s, he knew well the Preludes, etc . Vinicius was not convinced and said that perhaps Baden had had too much to drink.Thus, Vinícius decided to wake up his wife Lucinha, who was a pianist and a great admirer of Chopin . Vinicius summoned her to listen to Baden play the song. Lucinha confirmed to the tipsy duo that the song was beautiful, romantic, and by no means Chopin’s. Vinicius responded to Lucinha, “Even you are against me!” He turned to Baden and said, “In that case, Chopin forgot to compose this song.” He then turned to the typewriter and wrote the lyrics, all at once.

“Because without you, I don’t even know how to cry
I’m a flame without glow, a garden without moonlight
Moonlight without love, love without being given

Without you, I’m just lovelessness
A ship without sea, a field without flowers
Sadness that goes, sadness that comes
Without you my love, I’m no one

(woman’s part):
Ah, what saudade, what desire to see our life reborn
Come back, my dear
My arms need yours, your embraces need mine
I’m so alone, my eyes weary of staring into the distance
Come, behold life
Without you, my love, I’m no one”

Di Melo, o soul brasileiro

E ai, que remexendo em lsitas antigas, encontrei esta mágica pérola. Quanta coisa boa neste album épico de Di Melo.

” Kilário!Raiou o dia, eu vi chover em minha horta…”

“Entrou em choque publicitário
Foi forte a queda do seu império
É golpe duro pra milionário
Com honorários tornar-se servo…”

“A cidade acorda e sai pra trabalhar
Na mesma rotina, no mesmo lugar
Ela então concorda que tem que parar
Ela não discorda que tem que mudar
Mas ela recorda que tem que lutar”

 

Purê de Abóbora com Gengibre

Conta uma lenda indígena que de foi de dentro de uma abóbora saiu todo o mar que conhecemos, uma estória que contarei mais tarde. O gengibre,este ingrediente picante, insinuante,suculento, quase como um carinho de gato, que as vezes machuca mas é tão delicioso. O gengibre é considerado afrodisíaco , o kama Sutra o descreve com efeito de despertar a energia sexual. Nada mais interessante que unir o sexo e o mar e servi-los a mesa.

Ingredientes:

750 gr de abóbora cozida e amassada (eu uso garfo ou fuet para amassar)

80 gr de ricota (tenha um pouco a mais se precisar melhorar a cosnsistencia do purê)

1/2 xícara de cebolinha picada (e mais um pouco para enfeitar se voce desejar)

1 colher de sopa  de gengibre em pó

sal e pimenta branca moida na hora

Modo de preparo:

A abóbora pode ser cozida tanto em agua fervente como no forno (no forno ela também fica macia e perde menos nutrientes, mas  atenção para não queima-la , senão fica um sabor residual levemente amargo).

Amasse os pedaços de abóbora com um garfo ou fuet, acrescente o gengibre, a cebolinha, o sal e a piementa. Misture bem, acerte os temperos se necessário. E é isto, simples e delicioso.

Na foto, está acompanhando hamburguer de lentilhas e salada. Estou desenvolvendo um menu vegano/vegetariano. Os hamburguer aindam estão em teste para ficar com uma consistencia mais adequada, assim que desenvolver a receita , compartilho com voces.

Sugestão de musica para cozinhar:

L’amour c’est la mort

qui ouvre la porte

je vois, que tu sors

avec le sourire

L’amour c’est une voile

pleine d´étoiles

il faut, que tu ailles

chercher les yeux gris

partout…