We And The Sea - Tamba 4

 

Iemanja

Tamba 4: We And The Sea

Produced by Creed Taylor

Cover Photographs by Pete Turner

Album Design by Sam Intuit

Recorded at Van Gelder Studios

Engineer: Rudy Van Gelder

Recored September 5, 6, 7, 11, 12 and 14, 1967

A&M Records / CTI SP 3004

Luiz Eca - Piano & Organ

Dorio - Bass & Guitar & Percussion

Ohana - Drums & Jawbone & Conga

Bebeto - Flute & Bass (Bebeto plays bass on The Hill and Chant Of Ossanha)

From the inside cover: The Tamba 4 has brought us a new thing. Ever since its beginning in 1960, when bossa nova still really meant "the new thing," this group has been traveling a different road. Their music starts with bossa nova all right – the first hit recording of Girl From Ipanema in Rio in 1963 was theirs – but it takes off from there with an excitement, inventiveness, and swing that is absolutely their own. It is something that has come to be known simply as the sound of Tamba. This record, their first in the States, is alive with that new sound.

The Tamba sound is a composite of the sensitive talents of four gifted Brazilian musicians, and the mixer of that blend is leader, arranger, composer, and pianist, Luiz Eça (soft "c"). An ebullient 31 year old Carioca who studied classical piano in European conservatories, Luiz' piano arrangements glow with echoes of Ravel, Debussy, Rachmaninoff, and Gershwin. ("We are very friendly with Gershwin," says Luiz.) His playing usually sparkles with wit and delicate rhythm, but when he is driving it can be an aggressive, hell-for-leather stampede. On flute and bass is Bebeto, who has been with Luiz since the beginning. He started making music when he was nine and hasn't bothered to stop since to learn to read a note. He also sings. A few years ago, João Gilberto, the oracle of bossa nova, was asked who, after him, was the best bossa nova singer. "Bebeto," said Gilberto, who weighs his compliments, "but not after me – before me."

Playing drums, and all the other percussion tools that speak the language of samba, is Ohana. He, too, studied music formally in Europe, though there is nothing formal about his approach to his drums. Youngest of the Tamba 4 is Dorio, who joined up in 1966. (The group had been a trio until then.) Dorio plays classical guitar and bass. "He's our baby," says Luiz. "He is only 21 years old, but he has been playing the guitar for 22."

Incidentally, the quartet's name goes back to the first drum- mer of the group, who invented an instrument designed to help him make the dozens of percussive sounds of the batu- cada any group of Brazilians making samba. He called it a tamba partly because that is an African rhythm and partly because it is also a Brazilian plant, but mostly because it sounds like samba, which is the mother of Brazilian music. The drummer left, but the name stuck-and now Ohana is a batucada all by himself.

There is another very important ingredient in the Tamba sound and it goes back four centuries to the time when the cultures of the African slaves and Portuguese missionaries began mingling with that of the Brazilian Indian. The musical outcome was an exotic mixture of the profoundly melancholy airs of the Indian with the insistent, structured beat of the African and the loose, Moorish melodies of Portugal. This music is still alive in north-eastern Brazil (where most of Brazil's negroes live) and the Brazilian composer, Baden Powell, has drawn deeply from it for his own music. Three of his songs are on this record. This music of the north is some- times, and confusingly, called Afro-samba, but perhaps bossa norte "the northern thing" – would be more descriptive. It is darker in hue than bossa nova, more somber, more gutsy, and more authentic. Baden Powell is its prophet, and the Tamba 4 are its disciples.

So that's where the Tamba sound comes from. It is artfully distilled on this album, which gives a shimmering cross section of the group's musical evolution. We And The Sea is a smooth, sinuous piece of early bossa nova, and it appeared on their first recording in 1960. Flower Girl, dating from the same period, is a moving vignette of a girl's first bittersweet taste of love-and Bebeto justly earns Gilberto's praise in telling it. Dolphin is new, composed by Luiz and never recorded before. It is a gentle mood piece that soothes the spirit and seduces the ear with rich, modern harmonies. The three "bossa norte" numbers, lemanjá, Chant of Ossanha, and Consolation are all haunted by the lonely flute of Bebeto. The first two, particularly, are troubled by glimpses of the pagan deities of voodoo and macumba who have never been forgotten by the fishermen of the northeast coast (lemanjá is goddess of the sea; Ossanha of storms). All three works have splendid moments in their arrangements: listen for Ohana's dainty syncopated tick tick tick continuo that runs almost all through lemanjá; or his provocative conga prelude to Ossanha; or the intricately filigreed trio with piano, flute, and percussion about half-way through Consolation, and the agile bass lead that comes not long after. Finally, though it comes first on the album, is The Hill, which is something of a trade mark of the Tamba 4. It was written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Vinícius de Moraes, the pair who collaborated with Luiz Bonfa on the movie Black Orpheus (all three are close friends of Luiz'). In the original, The Hill is a touching, colorful tune that tells of the hope and tears and music of the shanty-covered hills around Rio. In the hands of the Tamba 4 it becomes a swinging 8-minute tour de force. Here, especially, are Luiz' echoes of Ravel, Debussy, and Gershwin; and right alongside is pure samba in the final barrage of Ohana's drum solo; and sandwiched in here and there are moments of humor, intro- spection and lament. This is the dazzling blend that is the sound of the Tamba 4. – Harvey Loomis

The Hill (O Morro)

Flower Girl (Moca Flor) - Portuguese vocal b Bebeto

Iemanja - Voices by Tamba 4

We And The Sea (Nos e ou Mar) - Voices by Tamba 4

Chant Of Ossanda (Canto de Ossanha) - Voices by Tamba 4

Dolphin - Voices by Tamba 4

Consolation (Consolacao)