There's more to Brazil than Bunda - singer Claudia Villela - Entrevista

Latino Leaders: The National Magazine of the Successful American Latino, Dec, 2001 by Conrad Fox

Singer Claudia Villela's effortless voice moves like a bird, sometimes lingering over dense rhythms and haunting guitar melodies, sometimes whipping up a frenzy of improvised scatting. There is something that recalls a Brazilian rain forest: vocals and instruments intertwine and move apart, leaving deep spaces like shadows in the jungle foliage, moments of nostalgia and longing.

"I have that romantic relationship with Brazil," the artist admits. "It's my womb, my roots, my anchor. That's what I am at my most profound." Music critics consistently point to this visceral connection to her native land. Reviews of her music, mostly glowing, abound with adjectives like "lush" and "verdant." "Villela doesn't just sing," wrote the San Francisco Examiner, "she actually dances with her voice on top of Brazilian beats." After a sold-out concert in New York. The Village Voice raved that "Claudia Villela and her musicians ... transported us to Brazil."

If her music is imbued with that inexpressible longing Brazilians call saudade, there is good reason. Villela doesn't live in Brazil. She lives in the Silicon Valley, and she is still coining to grips with the distinctly unromantic atmosphere of her adopted surroundings. Although her three CDs to date have not seen wide distribution--owing largely to her reluctance to commit to a major label--you will hear of her soon. Comparisons are made to Flora Purim, the 1970s pioneer of modern Brazilian jazz. She has been called "the greatest expression of Brazilian music in the US today" by bossa nova great Helcio Milito. Branford Marsalis has plugged her albums at jazz festivals and she was nominated "Jazz Vocalist of the Year" by International Record Distributors.

When we call, days "after her fortieth birthday party, she is beginning the first day of a new routine that may seem somewhat rigid for a soulful, sensitive poet. She has just taken her young daughters, Carla and Christina, to school, walked the dog and is sitting down to write a press release, a task she abhors.

Surrounded by her plants, and with a yoga break waiting for her in the afternoon, she is by no means discontent, but she keeps eyeing her brand new grand piano, a birthday present to herself, and she can't hide the fact that she would rather be composing right now.

"I'm a very disorganized songwriter, but what inspires me is the pleasure of writing, even if" that conies from hurtful experiences. Friends, flowers, a new blossom, all that inspires me. Even my PMS."

That's Claudia. An eloquent speaker--even if she claims to have learnt English by watching American television--she shifts as easily from the esoteric to the down-to-earth as easily as her voice crosses a five-octave range.

While her music is rooted firmly in the lilting poetry of bossa nova and rhythms of samba, she goes far beyond these to draw on musical influences as diverse as Portuguese, Moorish, Gypsy, Klezmer, and African. She is clearly uneasy with the bikini bop image that Brazilian music has taken on recently. "Sometimes," she says, "Brazilian music becomes bunda (literally "butt") music, and it gets to that level below the belly. But there is this very sophisticated, delicate, and spiritual aspect, and I hope that catches on."

Claudia herself was exposed to these aspects from an early age. Growing up in Rio de Janeiro, where music permeated every street and alley, she used to fall asleep at night to the intoxicating sounds coming from a nearby samba school. She was given a small pianola for her first birthday, and took lessons on and off for many years, although her teachers consistently chastised her for improvising. "They just weren't cool," she laughs. In fact, her musical education owed more to the influences of her family--virtually all musicians--who would meet regularly to play. "Popular music in Brazil," she says of those days, "was becoming dynamized by the meeting of different social classes and infected with the very earthy rhythms that the slaves brought from Africa."

For Claudia, music was still less a vocation than a natural aspect of everyday life. An inquisitive child, fascinated by everything from medicine and astronomy to poetry and art, her interests stemmed from "being in awe of everything." The awe led to confusion, however, when it was time to go to college, mad she found herself required to specialize. She chose to study music therapy, an amalgam of studies that encompassed philosophy, music, psychology, and anatomy that satisfied her multifaceted nature. She did her thesis on schizophrenics and autistic children, using her music to reach the unreachable. "I learned how to have dialogue through sounds, to find some kind of bridge that goes beyond syntax, because words can be so charged, I think I still do music therapy indirectly when I'm performing.'"

Clearly content in Rio and slowly unfurling her spiritual tentacles, in 1984 she suddenly found herself on a plane headed in the unlikely direction of Silicon Valley, where her then-husband, an engineer, had a job with a computing firm. Asked if she found the change difficult, her answer is revealing. "Oh yeah," she says quietly to herself, then with considerably more force: "Oh yeah! I hated it. Everything was so stiff. Everything looked so artificial, so plastic."