Gilles Peterson: Why I Love... Brazil

DJ, producer and record label boss Gilles Peterson on favela restaurants, 'digging', near-death experiences and the music of Brazil

6 mins

I’ve nearly drowned two times in my life and both times were in Brazil. We used to go out in Salvador and I got caught out on the ocean and nearly didn’t get back in. The same thing happened when I was in Rio. I would just go out swimming. In places around Salvador, you could be 20 kilometres away from the main beaches, with no one around, and sometimes it’s dangerous. If I hadn’t managed to get back in both times, there’d have been no one around to come and get me.

So, Brazil nearly killed me twice but I keep going back, which shows how much I love it there.

I first went to Brazil 20 years ago. I’d been hearing Brazilian music from the very early days; 30 years ago, I was introduced to it, with DJs playing Brazilian music in Richmond pubs on Sunday nights between nutty jazz and Latin records. That’s when I got my first taste of it. I became infatuated by the music and the country, and I had to go. I’d already started up my Acid Jazz record label by then, and I had enough money for me and a friend of mine, Paul Bradshaw, to go out there in search of the drum. We spent time in Salvador, hanging out with Olodum, which is the big drum school there, and we hung out in Rio. That was my first trip over there.

 

I was immediately drawn towards Rio, for the samba, bossa, jazzy sounds, but we spent time in Salvador and Bahia to check out the roots of urban street music. It was there that I realized there was a huge fascination with reggae in Bahia; there were posters of Bob Marley everywhere. Since then, I’ve been to a lot of different places, from Belo Horizonte to Sao Paolo to Recife, and realized there’s so many different kinds of music in all these different parts of Brazil, a lot of which never makes it out of the state.

For my Bam Bam Bam album and the new documentary film we just put out, I spent more time in Rio. With the World Cup and then the Olympics, it seemed a good time to get Brazilian music into the mainstream. The idea was to have the same effect with this record to Brazilian music had on me when I was 17. I wanted to introduce more people to Brazilian music, so I got hold of as many legends, heroes of mine, as I could. It was a brilliant experience.

Brazilian music has two big sides: the drum and the energy, and then that passion and emotion, which doesn’t happen in a lot of music for me. As a DJ, it’s not just pure energy but also emotion, melancholy, sadness. People have got such strong images of Brazil: the football and the beaches and aesthetic beauty of the country. You put those together with the music and your imagination just goes wild.

There’s so much music in Brazil. The music industry was very strong up until recently and it never got out of the country, maybe because of the military dictatorship or maybe because it was seen as too specialist. There’s a huge market. The DJs and the diggers (record collectors) and producers keep on discovering new music. You get people like Jay-Z and Kanye West who are into it, so the music of Brazil is being championed.

Gilles Peterson presents Brasil Bam Bam Bam from brownswood recordings on Vimeo.

 

For contemporary music, Sao Paolo, by a long way, is where the modern music and electronic music is being made. That’s where the record labels are and the club culture is, and where DJ Nuts is from, who for me is the Number One DJ in Brazilian music. In terms of new music, Sao Paolo is the place. I also went to Recife this year and enjoyed that a lot, with music on the Afro-Caribbean side.

My immediate place to go do digging (record-hunting) is Sao Paolo. It all comes there. There’s a street in an area of Sao Paolo called República that has loads of toy shops on one side of the street and on the other side loads of vinyl shops. There are great toy shops along there.DJ Nuts took me there and showed me around.

There’s so much to love about Brazil. All the elements that we’re seeing on television, the natural beauty, the colour. I met loads of great people over there who are passionate. A place I love to go back to is Salvador.

My favourite thing to do in Rio is to run. I always go running. I love it. There’s a perfect run down Copacabana, around the lagoon, round Ipanema and back again. That’s a good 20 kilometres. That’s all I really do when I’m in Rio: go running along the beaches and lagoon, and then do what I do in music. I mainly go there to record, go running, and then spend a lot of time in restaurants.

You always find good food. The local stuff is very barbecue-focused, very meaty. That’s fine by me; it’s great. For the fine food, my best tip is to get Ed Motta (Brazilian musician) to shows you around, take you to all all the best places and guide you through Brazil’s wine, and then I just sort out the money. That’s how I did it, anyway.

I also found a brilliant place at the end of Leme, which is the beach right at the end of Copacabana. There’s a restaurant up in the favela at Leme called Bar do David, the first restaurant up in the favela, which is run by a Brazilian man and a Japanese lady. It’s typical Brazilian meaty food but with a Japanese touch.

There’s an amazing jazz club at the top of the hill, too. It’s run by an Englishman who left England when Thatcher came into power. He got on a boat and meant to go to Costa Rica but he must have lost his way. He stopped in Rio, started hanging out, and now he’s got an incredible jazz club on top of one of the favelas, which is really cool.

I was watching the women’s cycling in Rio a few days ago. It’s brilliant to see all the places in Rio. There’s a huge hill - I think it’s called Vista Chinesa - that has the best view in Brazil. That’s somewhere I haven’t been to but I really want to.

As for the sights, I’ve done it all. You can’t beat Sugarloaf Mountain, Christ the Redeemer. A lot of the favelas now have the cable cars that take you up there. My favourite beach is right down the end of Copacabana by Leme. That’s one of the ones I nearly drowned in, though, so you have to be careful there.

 

The albums Gilles Peterson presents: Sonzeira - Bam Bam Bam (Brownswood / Virgin EMI) and Sonzeira - Tam Tam Tam Reimagined (Brownswood) are out now. See www.brownswoodrecordings.com for details.

The new documentary film Gilles Peterson presents: Brasil Bam Bam Bam, directed by Charlie Inman, is available to watch now (see above).

 

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