Nei Lopes

I stumbled upon Nei Lopes (Brazilian, b. May 9, 1942) in an quite unusual location: one of his CDs (De Letra & Musica) was sitting in the used discount rack of a CD store in coastal country town (pop. 44174) 3 hours from either Los Angeles or San Francisco. The CD was a kind of tribute to Nei Lopes: each song was a duet between him and a Brazilian samba or MPB heavyweight. On the cover of the CD was written the names of the guest artists that were singing with him: MPB king Chico Buarque, pagode sambistas Arlindo Cruz & Sombrinha and Zeca; there was also Alcione, the premier samba crooner-queen, plus many others. But just who is this Nei Lopes guy and what is this CD doing in San Luis Obispo?

I had to find out. It turns out that it was the best $6 I ever paid for a CD; for the remaining of the trip to SF I played the CD in the car, oh about 20 times. The CD is a mixture of up-tempo samba pagodes and ballads – skillfully arranged with lots of percussion, auxillary vocal backings, guitars and cavaquinhos and an occasional horn – and most, if not all, are Lopes’ compositions I believe. It was only later I found out he is a practicing lawyer in Rio. And what a nice voice you’ve got there, barrister.

But that’s not the end of the story. Nei Lopes is also a black activist, writer, poet and recently-turned blogger at the age of 62. Yet still he finds time to make damn good music. A rare, intellectual sambista.

Albums:

De Letra & Musica (2001/Velas) – As reviewed above, this is a solid CD that truly exceed my expectations. (If you are a Mangueira fan, you don’t want to miss the beautiful duet with Chico on Samba Do Irajá.) Highly recommended!

Japanese P2P program creator arrested

Winny P2P Software Creator Arrested[Slashdot]

This brings me back to a conversation with my friend Kuri last year when he said “Yes, Japanese govt. is always learning from the U.S., but only the bad stuff.” Chalk up one more.

Disney refuses to distribute Michael Moore’s new documentary

Disney is refusing to allow its subsidiary Miramax to distribute Michael Moore’s latest documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. The documentary, which I haven’t seen yet, supposedly bashes Bush on his ineffective handling of the war against terrorism, among other things.

Here’s what is interesting about the whole spat: Moore’s agent Ari Emanuel was quoted by NY Times saying that Eisner had told him not to distribute the film because it would anger Jeb Bush (Florida’s governor and brother of George Bush) and cost Disney the lost of tax break (on its theme parks in Florida.)

Disney of course, vehemently deny the charges, and says that Moore could take his film elsewhere to be distributed. That is indisputable of course. But why would Disney give up the chance to make money with Moore’s film? Moore is a director with a great track record in documentaries, his last hit being the highly successful “Bowling with Columbine” that made more than $140 million in domestic box receipts and DVD sales combined.

What seems to be shaping up is a good example of the sorry state of today’s US and global entertainment industry where powers are concentrated in a few powerful companies that can control what we see or don’t see. That surely makes it easier for any government to influence the media when they only have to seduce or blackmail the very few that distributes programming: a new form of censorship in disguise.

I wish Moore luck in getting the film distributed to a wide audience. In Hollywood where politics and connections run deep, I can see him fighting an uphill battle already even if he has the freedom to find another distributor.

Update: Disney CEO Eisner defends his company’s decision as such: “(We) did not want a film in the middle of the political process where we’re such a nonpartisan company and our guests, who participate in all of our attractions, do not look for us to take sides.” (International Herald Tribune, Friday May 7th Edition.)

Eisner’s argument sounds weak, and from this document seems like Disney made some “in-kind” contribution to the Florida Republican party when the party held a fundraiser event in Disneyworld back in 1999. Now if that is not “taking sides”, I don’t know what is. Sure, Disney has donated money regularly to Democrats as well, but the very act of donating to a political party – whether to just one or both – destroys Eisner’s argument that Disney is “such a nonpartisian”. (One may even argue that Disney is bi-partisan because they certainly could use Republicans’ help in Florida and, until Arnold came to power, Democrats’ clout in California.)

So, regarding the Disney/Moore situation, something else is definitely amiss here. Is Disney worried about drop in park attendence thanks to the distribution of Moore’s documentary? Are any (pro-Republican) parents going to say to their kids, “kids, sorry we cannot take you to Disneyland this summer because Disney’s subsidary Miramax is going to distribute a anti-Bush documentary”? I doubt it. What’s more likely is that Disney – a public corporation and by definition an entity that maximizes profit for its shareholders at the very least – knows for sure (or perceives that) it stands to lose more money from distributing the movie than not distributing it, whatever it is. And meanwhile, the art suffers.

A Movable Feast, part 2 (8)

(Eighth in the series, “Becoming a Father“)

[Note: wife is 30 weeks preganent at this point.]

As I reported three columns back, UFO started its kicking and stretching inside my wife. Since then, we found the baby would move quite frequently when wife is eating, or listening to music. So we decide to experiment: what kind of food and music would make UFO dance and wiggle the most? I have never gotten so excited about serious scientific experiments like this since my college biology-for-dummies class when I had the chance to test a cute classmate’s blood type.

Food

In this test, we check whether UFO moves within a five minute period after wife samples a particular food item. And here are the results:

Food	UFO Moves…?	UFO’s Comment
Mango	like no tomorrow	never had something so good in outer space
Brazilian bean stew (feijão)	a lot	’em beans fatten mom up and keeps me in orbit
Passion fruit ice cream	a lot	a godsend for someone trapped in this hot, dark space
Blueberry yoghurt	moderately	I like it coz I ain’t got teeth yet
Japanese food	almost never	too fishy (sushi), too sour (tsukemono), and too salty (miso soup)!
Chinese food	almost never	Again? I am bored bored bored bored bored

Aside from the comments, we are not making this up. UFO has indeed danced after wife’s mango consumption on many separate occasions. And despite wife eating some form of Chinese food almost every day, UFO almost never moves. Can it be just coincidence or does UFO already have a penchant for sweetness? We may carry out the same tests on UFO in a year or so when UFO is old enough to chew and see if the results match up. (Care to predict what kind of face UFO would be showing after eating a piece of sushi? Place your bets now!)

Music

Since more than ten weeks ago, every night before we turn out the lights to sleep we would play two or three songs on a MP3 player that is hooked up to a pair of headphones laid flat on wife’s stomach. (Might as well take advantage of the fact that we can still control what music UFO listens: i.e. no pop, no heavy metal, and absolutely no Kenny G.)

Those who believe in the Mozart-only-for-babies camp will no doubt shake their heads when I reveal to you that I play lots of different kinds of music for UFO to listen: jazz, lots of Brazilian music (mom’s influence?), world music, in addition to classical. I recall a visit many years ago to a friend’s place: his wife would only play Mozart for their newborn. “And what about Beethoven?” I asked innocently. The wife shook her head in horror as if heresy was spoken, but to this day I still think the temperamental composer’s more serene works – one example would be his 6th symphony “Pastorale” – would not fry an infant’s brain. In any case, seeing how adamant my friend’s wife was about “Mozart-only”, I wisely avoided asking her about Miles or Coltrane.

Here are some stats and results from the UFO Music Tests the past ten weeks:

• Music that set UFO swinging in the womb: Bill Evans Trio (Waltz for Debby), any Louis and Ella song, any forro (a type of Brazilian country music) plus others;
• Music that got UFO wiggling its body somewhat: almost any samba (I only play the quieter canções, not carnival enredos), music from the Brazilian Trio Tribalistas, Mozart’s piano concertos (e.g. No. 17 in G major KV453), plus others;
• Music that has failed so far to get UFO moving: Miles Davis, bossa nova incl. João Gilberto (UFO falls asleep?), John Coltrane, plus others;
• First ever song we played for UFO: “Spiritual”, a jazz number by bassist Charlie Haden and guitarist Pat Metheny. UFO moved, albeit at that point UFO was only 20 weeks old and its movement was more of a “feathery touch” according to wife, and not the strong karate chops that our little black belt does today.

So I’ll end this with a question: what music would you play for your infant? Leave your answers in the comment system.