I have a special, world exclusive pre-announcement for y´all to make and it´s about an upcoming release of mine called BOSSA DO MORRO. “Morro” means “hill” in Portugese, in Rio particulary, the hills are the cite where many of the city´s favelas are located. Thus BOSSA DO MORRO is a Baile Funk remix compilation I comissioned to celebrate this year´s 50th anniversary of Bossa Nova, the great musical genre that was birthed in Rio in the late 50s. When I first heard about this anniversary I immediately thought that there should be a Baile Funk Bossa Nova remix release. But soon I skipped the thought as I knew that it was quite impossible to get any original Bossa tracks for official remix use. Then I met Cristina Ruiz-Kellersmann, the Brazilian wife of Universal Jazz Germany boss Christian Kellersmann, and I suggested to her the compilation idea. She was enthusiastic about it and presented the idea to her husband who greatly supported the idea, together with Universal Jazz A+R Matthias Kuennecke. Eventually I was able to get access to parts of the Bossa Nova catalogue of Universal. Unfortunately not all of their prime tracks could be used, but BOSSA DO MORRO now features remixes of classic songs by João Gilberto, Tom Jobim, Sergio Mendes and Klaus Doldinger amongst others. The remixes are by Rio´s finest DJs such as DJ Amazing Clay, DJ Edgar, DJ Nazz, DJ Marrentinho, DJ Fu, DJ Dinho and a few others. The results are simply amazing. Think of “Girl From Ipanema” with a Miami Bass Beat. Think of “Insensatez” with a Tamborzão. It´s crazy. And I can assure you that there was a never a similar project like this released in Brazil.

How come that todays hottest Rio Funk DJs and producers never touched the big music legacy from their very own city? Well, there´s various reasons. For Cariocas (=the people from Rio) Bossa is the music made by the 1950´s bobos – the bohemian bourgeoise which hung out in Copacabana, Ipanema and Leblon. These are area that are culturally and socially far away from the grim reality in the favelas. But it´s not only this barrier that hardly produced any Bossa-Baile Funk tracks so far (except for DJ Sandrinho´s famous “Funk Bossanova”). For the Rio funk DJ culture, Bossa´s just been far from being cool or dope , it´s music to which you can´t really grind your teenage booty to. Thus hardly any funk DJ samples MPB (=Musica Popular Do Brasil) or 1950s, 1960s Brazilian music. To Funk DJs, music from the USA or Europe is cool to sample, but certainly not the music that their grandma´s or parents were listening to. So BOSSA DO MORRO is truly a debut piece. The compilation not only cultivates the first Bossa/Baile Funk pairing, it´s a compilation that probably will be considered blasphemic in Brazil, where the music from the favelas is largely still considered trash. But maybe – hopefully – this image will get a slight correction when people will finally hear that even the most crude MPC based arrangement with a chunky Tamborzão beat can pefectly support a subtle song by Tom Jobim.

Watch out for the full compilation, scheduled for an October 17th release on both vinyl and CD through Universal Jazz Germany. A 12″ vinyl pre-release with four tracks will be released mid September. Watch this space for some more news (sorry I cant give you any free downloads of this project).

Sérgio Mendes is the biggest globalizer of Brazilian music: In the 1960, with support from his mentor, the legendary Antonio Carlos Jobim, Sérgio Mendes started to translate Burt Bacharach and the Beatles into Samba and Bossa Nova. Global success followed, establishing Sérgio Mendes as the easy to access symbol of the laid back Copacabana sound.

Mendes recently resurfaced with another Will.I.Am produced album with revisited classics and new songs. In the current May/June issue of German music magazine “Spex” Sérgio Mendes gets asked to give comments on a couple of tracks played to him blindfold. After commenting on songs like “Fool On The Hill” by The Beatles, “Estrela Da Terra” by Dori Caymmi and Nouvelle Vague´s “A Forest”, MC Gringo´s “Perninha Depilada” is played. Here´s his comments:

SM: “This is baile funk, right? Funk is very popular in Brazil these days. The kids dance to this music all night long and freak out to this beat. I dont understand though what the guy is singing. Is he a foreigner?”

Spex: It might be his Swabian-German accent. MC Gringo is a German from Stuttgart who performs on bailes in Rio and he raps in Portugese. In this track he´s talking about a recent summer trend on the beaches of Rio – it´s about women that dont shave their leg hair but color them with peroxide.

SM: “Pardon me? I think I heard of this MC Gringo. The lyrics are nonsense of course, we dont have to talk about this. In many of the baile funk tracks people talk crap. Wordplays, jokes. I wouldnt consider it lyrical.”

Spex: You dont like baile funk?

SM: “The rhythm is great. It´s in my blood, it´s a lot of fun, because it comes from Samba. I think baile funk is much more interesting than techno, trance and all those new electronic music styles with their simple machine rhythms. On my new album I also use a beat that is inspired by baile funk, it´s on “Look Of Love”. Fergie from BEP is singing on this song. It´s the same beat, it´s the pulse of baile funk, the only difference is that it´s played life from my band, it´s not sampled”

Spex: Would you consider to work on one of your upcoming albums with a German artists such as MC Gringo?

SM: “I already do: On my new album there´s a cameo by the German trumpet player Till Brönner. His solo is magnificent!”

Spex: No, we actually mean if could you think of using German lyrics on one of your albums? You work with Italian and Spanish on your new release, you also work with a Japanese singer.

SM: “A song in German? Why not. As long as it feels right. To only sing in Portugese and English is getting a bit boring. For my next album I would like to work with Chinese for the first time. I never went to China and there´s so many interesting instruments! I also would like to work with Russians. But most of all I would like to perfom in Russia. Imagine that: I never played in Russia in my whole life!”