Guinga is Everywhere

The Rio de Janeiro-based guitarist/dentist Guinga writes the most hauntingly melodic music -- he wouldn't remember me but I took a week-long class with him a few years ago at Brazil Camp. I am learning O Silencio de Iara, by Guinga and Luis Felipe Gama, for an upcoming show. Luckily, I have it in the songbook I bought at his quietly spectacular Yoshi's show last winter. (It's always advisable to buy Brazilian or foreign songbooks when the opportunity presents itself as they can be hard to get otherwise.)

As an example of the kind of stuff he writes, at the end of this song there's a repeated, held note in the vocal, a high F, while the accompaniment is an arpeggiation of this:

| Fm6 G7b9 | Ab#11 G7b9 | Fm6 G7b9 | Ab#11 G7b9 |

On the record, Noturna Copacabana, the arrangement has no drums, and consists of guitar and strings -- what sounds like a lot of strings, certainly more than a quartet, but not quite an orchestra. I had to play through the chords to make sure this would sound good in a traditional jazz instrumentation. I think it will.

Going through my iTunes I came across Gracinha Leporace (wife of Sergio Mendes), whom I have been compared to in vocal quality, singing Catavento e Girassol by Guinga and Aldir Blanc on the Sergio Mendes/will.i.am album Encanto (love it!). Turns out that's a Guinga song too! In fact, on his homepage it says it was recently recognized as one of the best songs of the century.