Saturday, November 6, 2021

A01125 - Marilia Mendonca, Brazilian Singer

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Marília Mendonça's Live Album Is A Beacon For Women In Brazil

Heard on All Things Considered

MICHELLE MERCER

Last August, in the central Brazilian city of Goiânia, Marília Mendonça took the stage at a surprise concert. She repeated the surprise show in 10 other cities in the country. Brazilian crowds are known for their passion, but Mendonça's fans sang along with special excitement because the shows were announced on social media just hours in advance — a fitting move for Mendonça's brand and career, both of which have flourished through her social media strategy. Not only is she's the third most viewed female Latin artist in YouTube history, behind only Jennifer Lopez and Shakira, five of this album's videos are currently on Brazil's YouTube Top 40.

These 10 shows were recorded for Mendonça's latest album, a live album, called Todos Os Cantos or All The Corners.

In 'Macho' Brazil, Fast-Rising Star Marília Mendonça Is Inspiring Women To Push Back

MUSIC FEATURES

In 'Macho' Brazil, Fast-Rising Star Marília Mendonça Is Inspiring Women To Push Back

Mendonça is known as Brazilian music's "Queen of Suffering." It's a reputation the singer lives up to in one of her current hits, "Bem Pior Que Eu." where the song's narrator is the other woman in an affair who's tired of being second choice.

Mendonça grew up in Goiânia, the heartland a kind of Brazilian country music called sertanejo. Like American country, sertanejo has found mainstream success and can be nearly indistinguishable from pop. For Mendonça, an accordion is sometimes incorporated to bring in much of the rural character into her songs. One example of that being "Passa Mal," which was recorded in Recife, Brazil. "In my life, your heart served as a step," she sings in her rich voice. "Seeing you suffer is not good, it's sensational."

YouTube

Some of Brazil's cosmopolitan crowd scorns Mendonça's country power ballads as, "brega," or corny music. Sentimental or not, her songs offer a woman's perspective that hasn't been heard much in sertanejo's machismo culture, and it's made Mendonça the leading voice of a new subgenre called "feminejo"-- music by and for women.

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Mendonça's the first to say her brand of feminism is more of an attitude than a political position. Still, millions of fans find empowerment in her song lyrics that reject bad relationships or refuse to compete with women on the other side of the cheating equation. Fans simply see their own flawed lives represented in her songs, like the relatable scenario in "Bebi Ligue" of drinking, calling, hooking up and regretting.

Mendonça's been an advocate for imperfection in other ways, like resisting beauty standards with her full-bodied stature. That's changing a bit now after a few years into her career, with some weight loss and plastic surgery. But like everything else in her life, she's sharing details of this transformation on social media, taking fans along for the ride. Mendonça never apologizes for expressing the truth of her experience as a young woman, and that transparency has helped make her one of the most popular artists in Brazil today.

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Marília Mendonça, Brazilian Pop Singer, Dies in Plane Crash at 26

Ms. Mendonça, who was a social media sensation with millions of followers, was iconic in a type of Brazilian country music called sertanejo.

The singer Marília Mendonça performing in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil, in September. She died on Friday in a plane crash.
Credit...Will Dias/Futura Press, via Associated Press

By Vimal Patel and Flávia Milhorance

Marília Mendonça, a popular Brazilian pop singer who was known as “The Queen of Suffering” for her soulful, angst-filled ballads, was killed on Friday in a small plane crash in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais in Brazil. She was 26.

The singer’s press office confirmed Ms. Mendonça’s death and said her producer, Henrique Ribeiro; her uncle who was also her assistant, Abicieli Silveira Dias Filho; and the pilot and co-pilot of the plane were also killed.

The plane had been headed from the city of Goiania to Caratinga, where Ms. Mendonça was to have performed in a concert on Friday night. There was no immediate word on the circumstances leading up to the crash. The authorities said they were investigating.

Ms. Mendonça was iconic in a type of Brazilian country music called sertanejo, a popular genre in Brazil.

Her legions of fans found power in her song lyrics, which implored women to reject bad and abusive relationships, and told the stories of flawed characters. She won the 2019 Latin Grammy for best sertanejo album for “Em Todos Os Cantos.”

Ms. Mendonça was a social media sensation, with 7.8 million followers on Twitter, 22 million on YouTube and more than 38 million on Instagram.

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The plane had been headed to Caratinga, where Ms. Mendonça was to have performed on Friday night.
Credit... Minas Gerais Civil Police, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, said on Twitter, “The whole country receives in shock the news of the death of the young country singer Marília Mendonça, one of the greatest artists of her generation, whom, with her unique voice, charisma and music won the affection and admiration of all of us.”

Anitta, a funk singer popular in Brazil, said on Twitter: “I just found out. I can’t believe it.”

Some in Brazil’s cosmopolitan circles had scorned Ms. Mendonça’s country ballads as “‘brega,’ or corny music,” NPR reported in 2019.

“Sentimental or not, her songs offer a woman’s perspective that hasn’t been heard much in sertanejo’s machismo culture, and it’s made Mendonça the leading voice of a new subgenre called ‘feminejo’ — music by and for women,” NPR said.

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Thursday, November 4, 2021

A01124 - Saloua Choucair, Lebanese Painter and Sculptor

 

Choucair, Saloua Raouda
Saloua Raouda Choucair (b. June 24, 1916, Beirut, Lebanon – d. January 26, 2017, Beirut, Lebanon) was a Lebanese painter and sculptor.  She is said to have been the first abstract artist in Lebanon although she sold nothing there until 1962.
Born in 1916 in Beirut, Choucair started painting in the studios of Lebanese painters Moustafa Farroukh (1935) and Omar Onsi (1942).  Her exhibition in 1947 at the Arab Cultural Gallery in Beirut is considered to have been the Arab world's first abstract painting  exhibition. In 1948 she left Lebanon and went to Paris, where she studied at the Ecole nationale superieure des Beaux Arts and attended Fernand Leger's studio. In 1950, she was one of the first Arab artists to participate in the Salon des Realites Nouvelles in Paris and had in 1951 a solo exhibition at Colette Allendy's gallery, which was better received in Paris than in Beirut.
In 1959, Choucair began to concentrate on sculpture, which became her main preoccupation in 1962. In 1963, she was awarded the National Council of Tourism Prize for the execution of a stone sculpture for a public site in Beirut. In 1974, the Lebanese Artists Association sponsored an honorary retrospective exhibition of her work at the National Council of Tourism in Beirut. In 1985, Choucair won an appreciation prize from the General Union of Arab Painters. In 1988, she was awarded a medal by the Lebanese government. A retrospective exhibition organized by Saleh Barakat was presented at the Beirut Exhibition Center in 2011.
Choucair's work has been considered as one of the best examples of the spirit of abstraction characteristic of Arabic visual art, completely disconnected from the observation of nature and inspired by Arabic geometric art.
Choucair received an honorary doctorate from the American University of Beirut in May of 2014.
Choucair turned 100 on June 24, 2016 and she died on January 26, 2017, Beirut, Lebanon.


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Tuesday, November 2, 2021

A01123 - Amina Cachalia, Friend and Ally of Nelson Mandela

 Cachalia, Amina

Amina Cachalia (b. Amina Asvat; June 28, 1930 Vereeniging, South Africa – d. January 31, 2013, Johannesburg, South Africa) was a longtime friend and ally of Nelson Mandela. Her late husband was political activist Yusuf Cachalia.

Cachalia was born Amina Asvat, the ninth of eleven children in Vereeniging, South Africa, on June 28, 1930. Her parents were political activists Ebrahim and Fatima Asvat. She began campaigning against Apartheid and racial discrimination as a teenager. She became a women's rights activist, often focusing on economic issues, such as financial independence for women.
Amina and Yusuf Cachalia were friends of Nelson Mandela before his imprisonment at Robben Island in 1962. She became a staunch anti-apartheid activist. She spent fifteen years under house arrest throughout the 1960s and 1970s. She was the treasurer of the Federation of South African Women (Fedsaw), a leading supporter of the Federation of Transvaal Women, and a member of both the Transvaal Indian Youth Congress and Transvaal Indian Congress during the Apartheid era.

In 1995, Mandela asked Cachalia to marry him. At the time, he had been separated from his wife, Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. Cachalia turned down Mandela's proposal because she said that "I'm my own person and that I had just recently lost my husband whom I had enormous regard for". Mandela divorced Madikizela-Mandela a year later and married Graca Machel in 1998.

Cachalia was elected to the National Assembly of South Africa in the 1994 South African general election, the country's first with universal adult suffrage. In 2004, she was awarded the Order of Luthuli in Bronze for her contributions to gender and racial equality and democracy.
After her death, in March 2013, her autobiography When Hope and History Rhyme was published.
Cachalia died at Milpark Hospital in Parktown West, Johannesburg, January 31, 2013, aged 82. The cause of death was complications following an emergency operation due to a perforated ulcer.
Her funeral was held in her home in Parkview, Johannesburg, according to traditional Muslim customs. It was attended by South African President Jacob Zuma, former Presidents Thabo Mbeki and Kgalema Motlanthe, ANC Deputy Cyril Ramaphosa, former First Lady Graca Machel, former Finance Minister Trevor Manuel and fellow activisti Ahmed Kathrada, among others.

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Monday, November 1, 2021

A01122 - Bruce Gaston, American Maestro of Thai Music

 

Bruce Gaston, American Maestro of Thai Music, Dies at 75

A transplanted Californian and former conscientious objector, he infused Thai music with Western sounds as a prominent composer and performer based in Bangkok.

Bruce Gaston, left, brought Western sounds to traditional Thai music as a performer and composer. He and Jirapan Anasvananda, pictured with him in a studio in Bangkok in 1984, helped establish the band Fong Nam.
Credit...Barbara Crossette/The New York Times

By Seth Mydans

Bruce Gaston, a transplanted Californian who helped revolutionize Thai classical music by injecting it with Western instruments and forms, and who became one of Thailand’s leading performers and composers, died on Oct. 17 at his home in Bangkok. He was 75.

The cause was liver cancer, his son, Theodore, said.

Together with two Thai musicians, Mr. Gaston founded Fong Nam (the name means “bubbles”), an ensemble that worked to revive forgotten Thai classical pieces as well as to create modern forms, performing in concerts and in recording studios. Mr. Gaston played a piano or a synthesizer among the gongs and woodwinds of a piphat percussion orchestra.

He was a prominent and respected figure in Thailand as a composer, performer and teacher. In 2009, he became the only foreigner to receive the Silpathorn Award, which honors artists who make notable contributions to Thai arts and culture.

“I want to find a form that transcends this polarity between East and West, between the we’s and the they’s,” he said in an interview with The New York Times in 1987. “It’s silly to talk about East and West now. Technology has brought us all together.”

Mr. Gaston argued that infusing traditional Thai music with new forms was vital to its health, but that those new elements “must grow out of that tradition, or you risk losing everything that reminds you of who you are and who you were.”

Somtow Sucharitkul, a prominent Thai American writer and musician, called Mr. Gaston’s music a “new fusion” in which “traditional Thai ideas and Western structures were fluid, and could blend back and forth and fuse and have a uniquely Thai sensibility.”

“If anyone can lay claim to the title of ‘He who lit the revolutionary torch,’” he wrote in The Bangkok Post, “it is Bruce Gaston.”

Mr. Gaston developed a compositional language, informed by his training in Western classical and contemporary music, that “evoked but did not imitate Thai music,” said Kit Young, an American pianist, composer and artistic adviser who is the co-founder of Gitameit Music Institute in Myanmar and who lived in Thailand for many years.

Bruce Gaston was born on March 11, 1946, in Los Angeles to Marcus and Evangelin Gaston. His mother was a schoolteacher, his father a pastor. He graduated from the University of Southern California with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and earned a master’s degree in music in 1969. He received a draft deferment during the Vietnam War as a conscientious objector and was assigned to alternative service as a teacher overseas.

Mr. Gaston traveled to Jamaica before moving to Thailand, where he became entranced by the Thai music that was played during cremation ceremonies at a temple near his home, his son said. In 1971 he developed a curriculum in music at Payap College, in the northern city of Chiangmai.

Mr. Gaston began experimenting with combining Thai and Western forms and wrote an opera on Buddhist themes called “Chu Chok” in 1976. It was performed at the Goethe Institute in Thailand and in Germany in 1977 and 1978. He studied in Bangkok with Boonyong Kaetkhong, a master of the ranat, an instrument that is similar to a xylophone.

Mr. Gaston and another musician, Jirapan Ansvananda, founded Fong Nam in 1981.

“If you want to have influences from the West, great,” Theodore Gaston said, “but better to use it as a flavor and not the main thing. That is the Fong Nam way. If you listen, you can tell that it’s pretty much Thai.”

Fong Nam recorded a series of CDs of traditional music for the Nimbus, Celestial Harmonies and Marco Polo labels, said John Clewley, a Bangkok-based British professor of music who writes a column called World Beat for The Bangkok Post.

Mr. Gaston became fluent in Thai and applied his talents widely — lecturing on music at Chulalongkorn University, composing for movies and theatrical shows and performing for years at a famous Bangkok beer hall, the Tawan Daeng Brewery.

Early on he had a thriving business with other musicians writing jingles for Thai television commercials. “We sell banks, beer, all kinds of food, soft drinks, cars, perfumes, soaps and dishes,” he told The Times in 1984. “I’d say we have the majority of the market in Thailand.”

He married Sarapi Areemitr in 1976. She and his son survive him.

Mr. Gaston said his music aimed to bridge gaps between generations as well as cultures.

“Sometimes we can’t understand each other, the old and the young,” he said in 1987, when he was 41. He added: “In changing and discovering new forms, the old members of the orchestra have the hardest time. There are moments when the old boys play better than we ever will in the traditional style, and moments when they just can’t keep up with us.

“But you just play together — that’s the most important thing,” he said. “You don’t just say, ‘Forget it.’”


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