Brazzil Rita Lee—Aqui, Ali e em Qualquer
Lugar (Here, There and Everywhere) Available on world music stores. Average price: $18.
Rita Lee has always been one of my favorite Brazilian rock performers, and I have admired her work ever since I was
a kid. Her career, which began with her participation in the Caetano Veloso-led Tropicália movement—it was Brazil's
response to psychedelics—in the late sixties, has spanned through decades, great moments (in the late seventies and early
eighties), a downward phase (the early nineties) and a successful comeback.
Her latest album, Aqui, Ali e em Qualquer
Lugar (Here, There and Everywhere) is a tribute to the band that inspired
her musically and drove her into her long, fruitful musical career: The Beatles.
Aqui contains fourteen tracks in which she remade several Fab Four tracks in a very personal manner—she blended
the pop feel of the songs with Brazilian sounds in a very unique, personal way. Four of the tracks are sung in
Portuguese—versions penned by Rita herself after difficult negotiations in which the songs' editors (Northern Songs/Sony/ATV) only let her
remake four of the songs in that language, which forced her to record the remaining tracks in the original language.
The album opens with "A Hard Day's
Night"—the song that gave the Beatles' first movie its title. In Rita's version,
the song reminds us of the kind of sounds developed by Brazilian guitarist Jorge Benjor (known in the US for his plagiarism
lawsuit against Rod Stewart) in the 1970s—a mixture of samba and electric sounds, which takes the song to a complete new direction.
Other tracks, such as "With a Little Help From My Friends," "All My Loving" and "She Loves You" are performed in
a discrete bossa-nova style—much different from what The Beatles did, but not so original —other performers have
attempted the same kind of approach to some of those songs. The difference in these is that Lee shows us that she can actually
take yet another idol, bossa nova great João Gilberto—with whom she performed a number of times—in his own territory
quite successfully.
The Portuguese versions to "If I Fell" ("Para Você Eu Digo Sim"), "Can't Buy Me Love" ("Tudo por Amor"), "In My
Life" ("Minha Vida") and "Here There and Everywhere" ("Aqui, Ali e em Qualquer Lugar") do not sound too far from the
original, but also with her own trademark, which includes quite a lot of sense of humor—something that was never absent with
the Beatles.
"I Want to Hold Your Hand" was the track that amused me the most. In that remake, Rita Lee took
on forró, which is a traditional rhythm from the northeastern part of Brazil. It is quite weird to listen to that kind of beat with English lyrics.
However, the naiveté of the words blends well with the beat that moves many weekend nightclubs in the Brazilian states of
Ceará, Pernambuco and others.
The most impressive track on the album is, however, one of the Beatles' most
controversial, "Lucy in the Sky with
Diamonds." The song begins very much like the other
bossa-nova-styled tracks until it gets to the refrain, which then is
transformed to an Enya-styled tune, with all the backward instruments and that New Age feel.
Aqui, Ali e em Qualquer Lugar is a great listening experience, which I recommend to all fans of Brazilian pop music
or to anyone interested in new versions of classics of one of the world's favorite bands.
For more information on Rita Lee, log on to
http://www.ritalee.com.br
Ernest Barteldes is an ESL and Portuguese teacher. In addition to that, he is a freelance writer who has been weekly
contributing to the Greenwich Village Gazette
since September 1999. His work has also been published by
The Staten Island Advance, The Staten Island
Register, The SI Muse, The
Villager, Brazzil magazine, GLSSite
and other publications. He lives on Staten Island, NY. He can be reached at
ebarteldes@nycny.net
March 2002
Music Review
Fab Four Resung
"I Want to Hold Your Hand" was the track that amused me
the most. In that remake, Rita Lee took
on forró.
It is quite weird to listen to that kind
of beat with English lyrics.
Ernest Barteldes
