Lisbon trip music #2: Nacobeta & Puto Português

This Kuduro album was easily the most pushed all over Portugal when I was there, and listening to it I can see exactly why. There's a lot of straightforward hit bangers, of course, but also a couple of those vaguely polyrhythmic-sounding weird tracks that Kuduro seems to be thriving on. Here are my two favourites:

Nacobeta & Puto Português feat. Vui Vui - Manda potência (Mediafire)

Nacobeta & Puto Português - Baba Bum (Mediafire)

Lisbon trip music #1: a couple of Costuleta vids

There's probably more interesting stuff forthcoming, but at least I got a couple of videos up in YouTube that no one has posted there before. Both are from Costuleta's 2009 DVD Bomba Kuduro, which SoundGoods already posted some tracks off.

Tchiriri, his big hit, has a dozen videos it seems but this one is a bit different, since it focuses on Costuleta dancing. As you may know dude only has one leg, so it's fairly unusual stuff.



This was the most experimental video of the bunch, and one of the best tracks, I think:



Plenty more to come of course.

Lisbon pics, thinks, and a track

Many more pics in the Flickr photostream.

Portugal is an interesting and complex country and I didn't get anywhere near penetrating it, I felt, so no real travel report forthcoming this time. I'll share some stray impressions and pics though.

Street Sounds

Car audio blaring: Reggaeton. Kizomba. Free jazz. Car audio demonstration at the Praca de Espanha market: Hip-hop. Street vendor's music: Funana, reigning supreme. Bollywood a distant second. A guy in the appartment opposite my hostel: Minimal techno.

"Street" Art

I've travelled Europe from Dublin to Moscow and Lofoten to Naples, and I've never seen a country with as much grafitti as Portugal. Huge legal walls eveywhere, "street art galleries", exclusive hipster-minimal stores selling spray cans... and shitloads of illegal tags, paintings, defaced advertising, what have you. The more central and prestigious, the more grafitti, very sporadically cleaned off - as opposed to the pristinely kept street surfaces, cleaned off daily by huge crews. The picture above, incidentally, is from a seaside resort, but could just as well have been both the suburbs and the heart of Lisbon.

Actual, You Know, Streets

In Damaia, an African-dominated suburb next to Buraca of Son Systema fame (I resisted going there just for the photo op), I shopped for records at the HQ of label Sons D'Africa and the comparison with the hip and prestigious Bairro Alto was telling. Large swathes of Damaia are - like touristy Alfama in the city centre a thousand years earlier - permanentized slum, former shacks with added pavement, electricity, mortar and postboxes, retaining a labyrintine layout and touches of organic colony-building. Precisely the same values that makes Alfama and Bairro Alto attractive are here the hallmark of slum... Shaded courtyards, narrow picturesque alleys, tight neighbourhoods.

Honestly, which is the shabbier-looking of these two alleyways?





Favela Chik

If you felt I was being to uncritical of life in squatter settlements in the last comment, at least I didn't have a drink at this place:



And a teaser track...

I've got shitloads of music, including videos once I figure out how to upload them, and that deserves posts of its own. As a teaser, though, here's some music from a country I've never considered before: Guinnea Bissau. It's a strangely beautiful track that seems to bring together African and Portugese sensibilities in a fascinating Créol way, but don't worry, there'll be plenty more modern Kizomba, Kuduro and Funana coming up shortly.

Dupla di Forombal - Badjuda di Caió (MediaFire)

LISBON! (Help me orientate)

In one week's time I'm heading down to Lisbon for what I hope will be a fun holiday, but my intention is bringing back lots and lots and lots of great pirate/mp3 CDs in the bargain. The various lusophone diasporas offer up a marvellous creol Smörgåsbord of music that, as I understand it, has readily filtered back into the former colonial overlord (and hopefully subverted it). So I'm looking for kuduro, tarraxa, tarraxinha, kizomba, passada, cabolove, funana, Mozambican kwaito, Mozambican hip-hop, plus all kinds of Brazilian music. (Have I missed anything obvious or indeed obscure?)

Thing is, I know very little about where to go in Lisbon for this sort of thing, especially during Easter weekend. So I'd also love tops about the best street markets, shady record stores, banlieu hangouts and so on, to help me get stocking... I promise to return the favour by uploading plenty new content later.

Portugal: If only...

Damn, Portugal, damn. I really want to like this - it's a jazzier version of the Balkan ballad, over-the-top emotional, hugely built up, sung by a huge-bodied and huge-voiced senhora.

Vânia Fernandes - Senhora do mar


If only. I know it's a well-known tasks of musicologists to identify plagiarisms and melodic copying, and though I generally very lenient with this sort of thing this is going to run into huge problems. Because, essentially, the chorus has been lifted melodically and rhythmically from "Crucified" by Army of Lovers. Which happens to be one of the strongest tracks from a brilliant album. Like I said, it's a pity.