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February 2006
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Members : 17360
Content : 3757
Content View Hits : 29521365
Content : 3757
Content View Hits : 29521365
Poor Michael Franks. He gets no respect, no respect at all from jazz purists. Although most critics have grievously placed him in the same New Adult Contemporary, bush-league music category as that of L.A. keyboardist David Benoit - that is, of artists who've been plying their trade for years without either public acclaim or mass countenance - Franks doesn't look like a Rodney Dangerfield, nor does he act or sound anything like the late stand-up comedian. 
I'd been to every country on my list except for one, Brazil. The Brazil in my head was passion, romance, the samba, fresh fruit, tropical beaches, and the bossa nova. When I heard that in Brazil it's rude to show up on time, I thought that this just might be the place for me. How could I not love a country where I'd never be late? 
At the same time as they are announcing Brazil's achievement of oil self-sufficiency, the newspapers are also informing us that 27% of young Brazilians neither attend school nor work. We know that another 25% work instead of going to school, and that, of those who succeed in completing high school, the majority do this without receiving a satisfactory education. Less than 25% of Brazilians graduate from a high school with a minimum of quality.
Stylistically, Duduka Da Fonseca has always been his own man, an exceptionally versatile and melodic drummer who graces every recording he plays on. Best known for his work with Trio da Paz and as a sideman with, among others, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Lee Konitz, Jacques Morelenbaum, and John Scofield, Fonseca stays close to music's front-runners, occasionally striking out on his own as a leader. 
Why have I moved from checking the pulse of Asia to revisiting South America? And why Brazil? Brazil is categorized in investing circles as a developing country. Which means it's a poor country with lousy infrastructure and unfathomable corruption OR it is a country overflowing with natural resources and on its way to becoming a first world country.