Boston Globe, June 25, 2012

Boston Globe, April 11, 2011

NEW YORK – The narrow steps to the basement of a modest brick house in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood of Brooklyn lead into a little enclave of Salvador da Bahia’s Afro-Brazilian drum culture.

Instruments of all kinds crowd the studio: timbales, congas, and homemade drums using trash barrel tops and other recycled materials. Recording equipment covers available surfaces. Strong incense wafts through the room.

And a man with dreadlocks and an ultra-wide smile bounds from the clutter to greet a visitor with a warm embrace. “I just finished writing a song!” he says, in a lush Brazilian accent. “I’m very happy. You must have brought good energies!”

Dende Macedo is in a good mood. In fact, Macedo appears fixed in a permanently excellent mood.

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Boston Globe, September 5, 2010

The revelation, says guitarist Clay Ross, boiled down to a single song. It was a baiao – a style of folk music from northeastern Brazil – by one of the masters of the genre that drove home to this South Carolina country boy-turned-New York City jazzman a connection that he could not deny.

“It’s a song called `Voa Ilza,’ by Hermeto Pascoal,” Ross says, putting down the burrito he’s been eating at a Brooklyn terrace to tap out the rhythm while he hums the melody. It’s a long, jaunty, sinewy number that, to an American ear, sounds a lot like something that just came down from the Appalachian foothills.

“I mean come on, man, that’s a fiddle tune!” Ross says. “It’s bluegrass! And the groove is sick.” He taps away at the table top. “It had everything I liked about good groove music. It had all these things I could identify with.”

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Boston Globe, October 9, 2008

On “Novas Bossas,” the latest project from singer and composer Milton Nascimento, two legends of Brazilian – and by extension, global – popular music find their long-delayed confluence.

The first is the late Antonio Carlos “Tom” Jobim, the seminal songwriter of the bossa nova movement, whose compositions, artfully rearranged, make up the bulk of the record’s program. The other is Nascimento himself, a protean figure whose immense body of work has hovered both above the Brazilian scene, taking in all of its regional styles and influences, and away from it with, among other things, masterly incursions into jazz.

Born of a Rio de Janeiro concert last year to celebrate what would have been Jobim’s 80th birthday, “Novas Bossas” unites Nascimento with the Jobim Trio – featuring Tom’s son Paulo on guitar and grandson Daniel on piano, along with Paulo Braga on drums. Though not officially part of the trio, bassist Rodrigo Villa rounds out the unit.

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Boston Globe, July 25, 2008

NEW YORK – It’s about three songs into a live performance by Nation Beat, the exuberant and inquisitive Brooklyn-based band that has pioneered a synthesis of music from northeastern Brazil and the American South, that you realize for good that this is no run-of-the-mill, hippiefied world-beat fusion project.

That’s when, following two rounds of ferocious Brazilian maracatu rhythm pounded out on hand percussions and drum set, the group’s charismatic lead singer, Liliana Araujo, a vision of black Atlantic spirituality and grace in her flowing dress and Afro, announces a song by … Hank Williams.

What follows is a fascinating take on “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” – a song also featured on Nation Beat’s second album, “Legends of the Preacher,” whose release the band was celebrating last week with a concert at the club S.O.B.’s here. Nation Beat will be at Regattabar on Thursday.

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Boston Globe, June 20, 2008

One of the privileges of stardom is the ability to concoct and pull off projects that color outside the lines. In the past few years Sergio Mendes, the superstar Brazilian keyboardist and bandleader and longtime ambassador of bossa nova, has drawn freely on this license.

In 2006, for his first recording in eight years, he put out “Timeless,” an album of Brazilian and jazz standards reimagined as hip-hop and neo-soul tunes, with producer will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas as co-conspirator and the likes of Justin Timberlake and India.Arie as featured singers. With distribution through Starbucks, the album broke with commercial convention, too, raising eyebrows not only among musical traditionalists, but also in certain critical circles for whom the move seemed a tad declasse.

Now Mendes is back with “Encanto,” another Starbucks-supported production along the same model, with once again will.i.am as co-producer and a new roster of guest talent that spans generations and genres. Among them are trumpeter Herb Alpert, whose connection with Mendes dates back to the 1960s, along with Natalie Cole, new-school R&B singer Ledisi, and the Colombian pop star Juanes.

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