During the first Video Music Awards promoted by the Brazilian MTV in September, Marisa Monte was the only woman composer remembered by the show's organizers when it was time to give them prizes. "Injustice," yelled some artists, men and women alike. It's been an uphill battle for female Brazilian composers to get their talent recognized. In the first half of this century, for example, only two names, Dolores Duran and Chiquinha Gonzaga, were able to shine among an all-male constellation of stars.
The situation has been changing faster these days and the number of new women authors is finally increasing promisingly. Two new proofs of this tendency are the just-released CDs by Klébi and Junia Lambert. Both are composers and singers, both have been singing for some time and already have a following, and both didn't have a chance before to present a record the way they wanted it to be.
Already known from her singing on Paulistano (from São Paulo city) night clubs, Klébi, whose CD has simply her name, had to wait for years to be able to record what and the way she wanted. "I insisted on doing an author record. Before anything else, I'm a composer," she declared in a recent interview to Jornal da Tarde. She had previous offers to produce an album but they all required that she sing popular tunes and somebody else's compositions. The product the way she wanted ended up being released by the Dabliú/Continental recording company.
Junia Lambert comes from Minas Gerais, confesses being influenced by people like Led Zeppelin, Stevie Wonder and Brazilian rocker Rita Lee and remarks that she has no interest in perfecting her singing abilities. Before all, she is a composer, she says. She has accumulated a work of close to 300 compositions, 100 of which she herself, with no modesty, considers first class.
For her too, getting her first album was a tour de force. But the wait seems to have been worthwhile. Ar de Rock, Lambert's first CD, is a big undertaking which is being released by multinational Polygram after being recorded in its entirety in Los Angeles with American musicians only.
Junia is particularly proud of her deed that includes exclusively new and personal compositions:
"I had many doors slammed on my face. If I were only an interpreter I wouldn't have resisted all the pressure. I had no godparents. All I got it was the result of years of effort and a lot of determination."
Another female artist who's starting to be known as a composer has an illustrious family of musicians which includes her father João Gilberto, her uncle Chico Buarque de Hollanda and her mother singer Miúcha. But Carioca (from Rio) Bebel Gilberto, 29, who has had a stint as actress is not very impressed with her own last name. She has even moved to New York three years ago to start a career as singer and composer far from the blinding brightness of her family name.
Composing has given new visibility to Bebel in the Big Apple. The singer who started with an eclectic repertoire that included bossa nova and rocker Rita Lee, has been presenting herself at SoHo bars. "Lá em Copacabana/Que tem tudo de bom/Tudo o que é de bem/Suco de acerola com maçã/Que vem do bem do meu bem" ("There in Copacabana/That has all that's good/Everything that's nice/Acerola juice with apple/Which comes from my darling's goodness') are the initial verses of "Lá em Copacabana", a song she composed with musician Towa Tei. The New York night-club crowd has been dancing and singing to her composition in hot places like Roxy and Jackie 60's.
To the Brazilian public, Bebel's work is not that new. Her first Brazilian CD -- Bebel Gilberto -- was released by Warner in 1986. The album had her own compositions as well as late Cazuza's. Lack of marketing, however, left her album almost untouched in the record stores. Bebel is in no hurry while she laboriously composes for an upcoming CD with Brazilian pop music. She is been drinking her inspiration in such fountains as Zizi Possi and Vânia Bastos, both of whom, whom she considers the best female Brazilian singers alive. "Why would I sing rock with Portuguese lyrics? It has nothing to do with me."
The 90s have been very fertile with female composers. They are called Daniela Mercury, Laura Finocchiaro, Vange Leonel and Dulce Quental, Fernanda Abreu, Adriana Calcanhoto, Marisa Monte, Verônica Sabino, Fátima Guedes, Sueli Costa, Paula Toller, Ângela Ro Ro, Taciana, Luli, Lucina and Alzira Espíndola.
Taciana, for example, who was part of the band Gang 90, had her first CD -- "Janela dos Sonhos" ("Window of Dreams") -- released recently by the small label Natasha Records. For her, composing is essential, since that's the way she is able to "define a style." Despite all the problems she had to face to get her album recorded, Taciana is already busy preparing her second CD with release planned for May 1996.
And there are those singer-composers like Paulista (from São Paulo) Fernanda Porto who don't get a chance to record a first time even after years of proven excellence on the night-club circuit. Others decide to produce their own albums. That's what happened to Dulce Quental, who after three good solo-albums cut her ties with EMI-Odeon and opted for her own recording company. Things have been hard for her, however, and she had to interrupt the recording at the mixing stage due to lack of money.
Gaúcha (from Rio Grande do Sul) Laura Finocchiaro was luckier with her independent flights. Composing for almost 20 years, she decided to release her own LP in 1991. As many of her colleagues she started on night-clubs. She became a household name only recently after having some of her songs included in TV ColOsso, a child show made for Globo TV. Now, with 15 songs for children, after having renewed the language of kids' tunes in the country, Finocchiaro intends to record a CD for children.
Ten of the twelve cuts from Zélia Duncan, a CD from 1994, were composed by Duncan herself. But she doesn't believe a singer has to compose to become interesting and be able to effectively communicate. "More important than writing music and lyrics," she says, "is finding yourself and discovering ways to express what you feel." Composition for herself, however, was important. "People give your more credit and listen more attentively to you when they find out that you are the song's composer."
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