Bola Sete

 
 
Bola Sete

Another of my favorite Brazilian guitarists is the great Bola Sete. I think of him as a contemporary of the great Baden Powell, since most of the available recordings are from the same time, but he was actually 14 years older. He was born July 16, 1923 in Rio de Janeiro, and his real name was Djalma de Andrade. The words "bola sete" are the Portuguese for the seven ball in billiards, which in Brazil is the black one, like our 8-ball here. He got his nickname as a young man when he was the only black man in a small group. Like Baden Powell, he played the acoustic guitar, or violao, and like him he played it completely - it was his voice. (I've read that he also played an instrument called a choro, but on all the recordings I have he just plays guitar). He had his own touch, and incredible chording and a great, vibrant feeling. He also incorporated more of a jazz sensibility into his playing than Powell did.

Mambossa



He was born into a musical family, one "in which everybody gathered together on Sundays to play music. All the popular Brazilian instruments were present, including guitars, tamborines and makeshift percussion, and a large meal of rice and beans was prepared. The food and music were shared and the happiness of life itself were celebrated in a day of joyous music and song." ( That sounds like a good start to me! ) His first teacher was his Uncle George, who was the foremost guitarist in his family and who he composed a solo guitar piece for ( "Tio George", recorded on "Ocean Memories" ). Later he studied guitar at the Conservatory of Rio and started performing with his own sextet while he was still a student. During his lifetime he soaked up and synthesized many influences - Brazilian folk music, jazz, bossa nova, Spanish music, classical guitar and American folk music. Some of his favorite early influences were jazz guitarists - Django Reinhardt, Charlie Christian and Oscar Moore, and he was also captured by the sound of the big bands that were touring South America at that time - Dizzy Gillespie, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman. In the 60's he became a great fan of Wes Montgomery and George Van Epps, and when he first heard an album by the latter, he memorized all the tunes and solos, sometimes performing them as a tribute.

In the 40's and early 50's he worked with various artists and his own groups in Rio and elsewhere around Brazil. In 1952 he went to Italy and played in several clubs and hotels for two years. In 1954 year he returned to Brazil and formed an orchestra, with which he toured through Argentina, Uruguay and Spain. In 1955, toured again, this time through Lima, Peru and Santiago, Chile. Shortly after, he came to the US when he was hired, in 1962, by the manager of Sheraton Hotel chain. He had begun recording by this time and string of records came out in the 60's. That same year he appeared at the historic Bossa Nova Festival at the Carnegie Hall, New York, and also played at the Village Gate and Vanguard while maintaining his gig at New York's Park Sheraton.

Soon he moved to San Francisco to play in the Sheraton Palace. Dizzy Gillespie was working at the Blackhawk and staying there, and he was listening to Bola playing every night. When Dizzy brought his pianist, Lalo Schifrin, to the hotel, he discovered that Lalo and Bola had already met and played together in Argentina. That's how Dizzy met Bola, and this meeting was the beginning for Bola's success in the US. In the fall of 1962, at the Ninth Annual Monterey Jazz Festival, Dizzy was presenting a program devoted to exploring the links jazz has with folk music from other parts of the world. He told Jimmy Lyons, the festival's general manager, "I want Bola Sete on that show". He was put on and he stole it - He even got up and nearly out-danced Gillespie ( and Dizzy could dance ).

After that, he toured and recorded with Gillespie and finally returned to San Francisco where he joined Vince Guaraldi's trio. Sete was already well-known in the US, and his partnership with Vince was also successful for both of them. They recorded several records together as well. After working for a couple of years with Guaraldi, he formed his own trio with fellow Brazilians Sebastian Neto (bass) and Paulinho (drums). With his own trio, he appeared once more in Monterey (1966) with equal success. This appearance was recorded and released on Verve records - I think it was his best seller here as I see it fairly often in used record stores.

He settled in northern California, recorded some more records, including several solo albums, and died in February, 1987. Sadly, almost none of his recorded work is available on CD. You can find one of his later solo records put out on CD by Samba Moon records, which is VERY nice, but for the rest you have to hunt for used vinyl.


Tour De Force

I've found a few of the records - his first on Fantasy called Bossa Nova - also the one mentioned above that was recorded at the 1966 Montery Jazz Festival, which features a brilliant medley from Black Orpheus w/a long section where the whole trio plays percussion ( batucada ). There's another with Vince Guaraldi and finally a solo record called Ocean - I'll come back this one. I've also got another early one, 'Tour de Force", on cassette from a friend. All of these except Ocean are from the 60's, and he mostly plays bossa novas, sambas and occasional jazz tunes and classical and flameco-type pieces. Always there's a great spirit and musicality in his playing, and everything has the stamp of his warm and improvisational personality. I particularly like the solo chord/melody pieces, like "Manha de Carnaval", on the Bossa Nova record, and "Days of Wine and Roses" on the record with Guaraldi. His harmonizations are full of surprises and great punctuations. He plays the "Manha" arrangement very much the same on the Monterey record coupled with "A Felicidade" and an incredibly spirited "Samba de Orfeo".

The Ocean record is very special, and it has been reissued on a 2 CD set called Ocean Memories - it's the only CD I've found of any of Bola Sete's recordings*. The original vinyl I've been listening to for some years, but now his wife Anne has started a small label called Samba Moon records, with apparently just this CD as its catalog. It has the original 11 songs on the first CD plus 8 great outtakes ( all different material ) on the second. It's a special recording - he began playing solo guitar ( according to the excellent liner notes ) in 1970 and toured for several years on the West Coast, playing college concerts and small clubs - the pieces on these CDs were all included in his solo set and he'd been performing two or three times a week for 2 years, so he was very well prepared when he went into the studio in 1972.

It's also beautifully recorded, and the music is the eclectic mix described above, though now there's really no jazz influence felt. It's powerful and evocative and with a lot of feeling - often folklike in it's harmonic simplicity but not simple at all and all beautifully played. I like all of the pieces, but my favorite is one called "Black Mommy" on the original vinyl and "Paradise Love Song" on the CD. No reason is given for the two different names. It's a folklike piece with a powerful feeling, very beautiful and with a deep inner strength. It's the closer, and the John Fahey's notes on the CD describe how the order of pieces reflect the type of solo sets he played live: "They all begin and end with songs whose emotional contour is pretty, happy, light, peaceful, or ecstatic. But after the first two or three songs, the terrain gets rougher and darker, heavier and weirder...But then Bola gradually lightens up the spectrum of feeling and leads you out of the cave into the sunlight, and life is paradise. Only now, one is so changed that one is temporarily aware that life is really paradise after all, the world is an ocean." A nice description, although I'd say that Paradise Love Song is more than just pretty and happy - it's got a profound depth to it that is very moving. All the pieces have that, really, though some are certainly darker. I HIGHLY recommend this CD - both because of it's content and because so little is available. And let's hope that the rest of his work is soon reissued with the same care that is shown in this one.

*except his 13 minute "Orpheus suite" that is available as a bonus track in the "Orfeo Negro" soundtrack. The excellent and touching liner notes on Ocean Memories do mention the recent reissue of another album called Guitar Moon Suite, originally ( and still? ) on the Dancing Cat label, but I haven't seen it.
PS - there is also a wonderful video available narrated by Carlos Santana called "Influences" where he talks about some of the players who influenced him with great clips of each. The three he talks about are Wes Montgomery, Gabor Szabo and Bola Sete, and there are great clips of each one in performance - I think Bola's set came from Ralph Gleason's TV show. Also highly recommended...