Der Kreisel

Verdes Anos (Carlos Paredes) | Budda Power Blues

I guess these guys are worth checking out live, my Friday afternoon depends on that assumption. Compare to the original composition, by the way.

So I finally watched that Edgar Pêra documentary I mentioned before, visually it was more interesting than I expected, but the music was completely beyond.

In it, Carlos Paredes plays these Variações em Ré Maior.

• Carlos Paredes Portuguese guitar
• Fernando Alvim classical guitar

And anytime now I’ll be watching this little beauty I got two weeks ago, it’s called Movimentos Perpétuos: Cine-Tributo a Carlos Paredes (Perpetual Movements: A Tribute to Carlos Paredes, 2006 imdb), directed by Edgar Pêra.

Carlos Paredes plays Frustração (Frustration).

I heard it on the radio today, and I was really confused for a while, you can recognise Verdes Anos, which I have already posted, from 2:00.

I never cared much for Fado, as most Portuguese from my generation do, but since I started listening to Flamenco for my Spanish oral exam, I decided not to ignore our musical heritage as well, which made me listen to Carlos Paredes quite a lot, and he is amazing.

I’ll risk saying that he is to Fado as Piazzolla is to Tango, I believe they were both technically gifted, inspired and innovative for their time. No ordinary musician can make something like this, it is so deeply emotional and inspired, not to mention very intelligent, and popular music!

I think overall this is what I look for in popular music, I expect good popular music to have emotional depth, to be somewhat intelligent, to be appropriately performed, and though you can find such music in most genres (which is why I am not a genre snob), everything always seems to lead back into roots music, into folk and traditional and blues, into world music of all kinds, into mediterranean and latin music, it just feels so authentic!

Not ignoring jazz, which is guaranteed never to get you bored…

And I find myself moving increasingly away from “Leitkultur”, if I dare use that word, from pop and rock and especially indie, the latter of which I think I never understood properly, though I can often recognise these guys’ talent and worth, particularly in certain genres of rock, a bit less in good pop, considerably less in indie.

I don’t know, pop-rock-wise, I think I’m always looking for something exotic, something strange and challenging and unexpected to listen to, but carefully packed into a presentable format. The 70s were really generous on good rock music, the progressive wave is mezmerizing, I could get lost listening to thousands of really cool songs, it just makes it seem that everyone was inspired back then, it was a fantastic decade on most popular music genres.

The good thing is, I can still enjoy a good pop anthem, especially those from the 1980s. I guess when you really enjoy music, as a whole, the good stuff will always bring you pleasure.

Portuguese iconic guitarist Carlos Paredes plays Verdes Anos, one of his most recognisable tunes, from the soundtrack of Pedro Rocha’s film Os Verdes Anos (1963), which would now have made it into my to-watch list if I had one.

And below you may see the man himself playing it live at Teatro São Luiz with Luísa Amaro, Lisboa 1992.

And here you may see a previous post of mine, in which Portuguese project CORDIS play a different tune of his, Movimento Perpétuo.

So apparently Fado is now part of UNESCO’s World Heritage.

This is Portuguese project CORDIS playing Movimento Perpétuo (literally, Perpetual Movement) on Portuguese guitar, composed by iconic guitarist Carlos Paredes, live in Coimbra September 2008.

There is something personal about Coimbra. Even though my family, on my mother’s side, had lived for centuries in the Portuguese African and Asian colonies, one of my earliest recorded ascendants is, according to this page, natural from the region.