Daniel Shoemaker Photos
Sessa.
At the State House on Friday night, Brazilian musician Sessa did his country proud just hours before the passing of Brazilian music titan Joao Gilberto.
Gilberto may not quite be a household name in this country anymore, but in his native Brazil, he was a national treasure. His collaborations with Stan Getz brought bossa nova to international audiences and popularized Brazil’s de facto international anthem, the Antonio Carlos Jobim-penned “Girl from Ipanema.” Saturday, Mr. Gilberto, at the age of 88, passed on to whatever lies beyond this plane of existence. Fortunately, his music remains here with us, on records and reverberating down a long line of Brazilian musicians extending directly to the present, found in contemporary musicians like Sao Paulo’s Sessa.
Sessa has a lanky Marc-Bolan-by-the-beach look. Donning sand-colored linen pants and a loose white tank, his ecstatic swarm of dark hair and unconsidered black mustache lent him a slightly mystical air. His music faces frequent press references to tropicalia and occasional comparisons to Devendra Banhart’s more appropriative impulses, a parallel surely bolstered by Sessa’s aesthetics. But to call him a Brazilian Banhart is woefully inadequate and calling anything tropicalia without any further clarification is not a particularly helpful sonic descriptor.
Tropicalia is essentially a blanket term used to describe a quite disparate group of experimentally-minded Brazilian bands from the ‘60s and ‘70s that, while all sounding unmistakeably Brazilian, ranged from raucous surf-tinged sambas to technicolor theatrics, fuzzed out lysergic splurges to ethereal syncopated dreamscapes. Given the sum of those sonic connotations, one would expect Sessa’s sound to be considerably more “out there” than it actually is. Though not without left field moments or meandering experimentation, Sessa’s sound is surprisingly traditional.
Seeing Sessa live was an exercise in understanding just how much DNA he and Mr. Gilberto, the father of bossa nova, have in common. They share a silky whisper-sing, known for drawing out Portuguese’s rounded vowels and making delicate percussion of their consonants. The buoyant strums of Sessa’s nylon string revel in quintessentially bossa rhythms and even his jazzy inverted chord voicings echo techniques that Gilberto pioneered. As torch bearer, Sessa may be slyly marketed, but he is also unmistakably adept at sculpting a complete sonic environment that breathes fresh life into a sound that is warm and familiar.
The State House, for its part Friday night, assisted in fostering an atmosphere by dressing for the occasion. The venue had on some more intimate lounge wear than usual. The normally clear general admission floor was largely covered in rows of small, round cocktail tables, and the stage was backlit in a sensual magenta glow. Even without scarlet table cloths or ornate candles, the space felt considerably more Copacabana than usual. As attendees ambled in, the atmosphere was completed by a well curated set of Brazilian deep cuts from Brazil native DJ Curiango.
Alexander.
When opener Alexander — a.k.a. multi-instrumentalist David Shapiro (Headroom, Kath Bloom, etc.) — took the stage, he embarked on one of the more startling show openers I have experienced in quite a while. With sensitivity and precision, what ensued was a demolishing delicately gorgeous nylon string rendition of Erik Satie’s “Gymnopedie 1.” The use of nylon string guitar and proximity to a set of Brazilian music lent the transposed piano score an almost Latin feel completely foreign to the original. As the last notes rang out, the audience remained totally still, just as they had been for the duration of the song, silently and motionlessly absorbing the beauty. Then there was uproarious applause.
The remainder of Alexander’s set showcased his dexterity and flexibility across four instruments (aforementioned nylon and steel string guitar, banjo and organ), playing a variety of folk and roots tunes that ranged from porch-stomping banjo rounds to John Fahey-inspired primitive picking. He ended with a somber organ composition consisting of dark droning chords. With the only vocals of his set, he lamented the unknowability of the human condition.
Sessa eagerly took the stage on Friday, the first stop of his U.S. tour. His stripped-down live band consisted of himself on vocals and guitar, a drummer with only two floor toms and a series of mallets, brushes, sticks and hands to change the drums’ timbre, and three female backing vocalists with the curious task of jointly raising unison vocal lines high into the music’s atmosphere and providing occasional auxiliary percussion in the form of shakers and rain sticks, always to cacophonous effect.
The setup allowed for a lot of open sonic space and the band filled it expertly. One could hear not just the beat of mallet to drum, but the echo of the drum skin as it jumped back into place to prepare for another breathy rumble. The back-up vocalists, with their unison lines, filled the room with swelling vocal surges that tightened and loosened before crashing back down to silence. The effect was dramatic and captivating.
The highlight of Sessa’s set came about halfway through his performance when his band cleared the stage and he performed a few songs solo, most striking of which was his cover of a little-known single by Miami soulstress Helene Smith entitled “I’m Controlled by Your Love.” Though expertly composed, the original’s production is a bit drab; lovingly cradled by Sessa, the song became a timeless showcase of his finest assets. His soft voice, his acute dynamic sense, and his ability to maintain a reverence for music’s past qualifies him to steward it into the future. The legacy Mr. Gilberto created with his unique strain of Brazilian music seems to be in safe and capable hands.
